Washington: Cummings Aerospace is now ready to manufacture its Hellhound loitering munition at what equates to low-rate production, CEO Sheila Cummings said in a recent interview at its new production facility near Huntsville, Alabama.
The company chose a space next door to Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, home to the program office and testing and development for Army aviation, in 2021 and designed and built a facility intended to produce large numbers of the drones.
“The work we have done to date, not only with the development of the vehicle, but preparing for major acquisition and production of these vehicles, has been a huge focus for us,” Cummings said. “We’re really excited that we are now at manufacturing readiness level 7.”
The classification equates to a defined production workflow at the facility and the establishment of work instructions for building the air vehicles.
Hellhound, weighing less than 25 pounds, flew faster than 350 miles per hour at full throttle while passing distances of 20 kilometres using just 50% of its fuel, according to the company.
The air vehicle is the first major end-to-end weapon system developed by Cummings Aerospace, a Native American woman-owned small business founded in 2009 as an aerospace engineering outfit with expertise in design, development, production and sustainment of capabilities, including missiles, radars and command-and-control system technologies.
Hellhound will be demonstrated in several upcoming events with special operations, the US Navy and even abroad in the UK this summer, according to Cummings.
“We’re using these demo opportunities, in addition to our flight tests, to ultimately execute low-rate production,” Cummings said. “We’re talking about quantities of 12 to 14 vehicles for these demos,” she added, “but it’s really allowing us to fully vet our production process.”
