Two U.S. Navy submarines—one Los Angeles-class and one Ohio-class—are using robots to help extend the life of aging engines, Steve Pykett, CEO of Fairbanks Morse Defense, told Defense One.
“To maintain that engine and keep it in service for longer and longer, we go in, we lift the crankshaft, the casing up. Conventionally, we would ask one of our skilled welders to sit inside that engine casing—there’s a two-foot opening—and weld hundreds of weld beads to build up those wear locations. And that’s clearly not a nice task to ask them to do. It’s very, very high temperature, very dirty, not a pleasant experience,” he said.
So, Fairbanks is using cobots, or collaborative robots, that use machine learning to automate the process.
Cobots are particularly useful for repeated, time-consuming welding tasks, with an experienced operator nearby to make sure everything goes well. And using them more could help keep shipbuilding and maintenance schedules on track.
“The operator is still there outside the engine, in a safer environment. They’re monitoring, supervising, and if there’s any special cause of events…[they] may have to go in and investigate,” Pykett said.
But the best part, he said, is the cobots shrink a multi-week process to days.
“Because we have to weld, we have to machine, we have to peen the surface. What was five weeks is now five days,” Pykett said. “In terms of being able to turn these availabilities around in a compressed schedule and get the fleet back out into theater; that’s a major win for us.”
Pykett said Fairbanks already commonly uses automation for machining original equipment, such as forgings, but wants to expand the tech’s use on submarines and surface vessels.
“We’re already taking that same system and developing it so we could potentially go into other confined spaces within subs and surface fleet vessels, and developing even further so it could, effectively, autoguide itself around a pressure vessel, for example,” he said.
“Right now, within our engine environment, it’s very predictable. We can put on a rail and it will, effectively, still seek and find the right locations geometrically. But we want to be able to go in and develop that further, so that it can go in more complex geometries and more complex spaces.”
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2025 Q4 earnings highlights
Three of the biggest defense contractors held earnings calls this week. Here’s what stood out:
- Boeing closed out 2025 with a $565 million loss on the Air Force’s KC-46 tanker. CEO Kelly Ortburg called it a “bad contract” but said the embattled program showed “encouraging operational performance trends, which, if sustained, should enable us to meet our customer delivery commitment and set us up well for the next tanker order. beyond the current program of record.” Defense One’s Thomas Novelly has more.
- Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden talked up the company’s unmanned and munitions production investments, noting the company’s plans to triple tactical solid rocket motor production at two sites by 2027 and 2030.
Noteworthy: When asked if the Pentagon’s billion-dollar solid rocket motor deal with L3Harris disadvantaged Northrop, Warden said: “We’re not in discussions with the government about an arrangement similar to what they’ve entered into with L3Harris. And I would say that, as we think about being positioned to compete, it’s all about the munitions that you can support with your capacity.”
- RTX CEO Christopher Calio responded to White House critiques of the company’s munitions production Tuesday: “We absolutely feel the responsibility and urgency to deliver more and to deliver it faster. And candidly, we understand the frustration. And I can tell you, our focus and resources are fully aligned with the department’s mandate to ramp production and invest in capacity.”
“We made some progress in 2025…Output was up over 20 percent on a number of the critical programs, but there’s more to do. We expect to significantly increase output again this year, and we’re also going to increase our [capital expenditure] to enable that ramp.”
- Bonus round: Booz Allen Hamilton revealed plans to invest $400 million in venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, A16z, during its third-quarter earnings call for 2026 on Friday. The firms announced their partnership earlier this year.
- “We understand the operational gaps that are limiting, not just early proofs of concept and when, but what’s limiting scaled adoption,” Steve Escaravage, Booz Allen Hamilton’s head of defense technology business, told Defense One in an interview. “And so we’ve come together, to partner, to figure out: how do we take those companies that are ready to scale, and how do we supercharge that process by opening up all of our existing portfolio, all of our mission insight and making that available to all of the [Andreessen Horowitz] portfolio companies. And we’ve already seen great results.”
More on manufacturing
- Leonardo DRS opened a propulsion manufacturing plant to support Navy submarine and shipbuilding programs.
- Hadrian, an AI-fueled factory building startup, is opening a new factory in Mesa, Arizona on Thursday. The company, which focuses on the defense and aerospace sectors, also recently announced an additive manufacturing division. Chris Power, the company’s founder and CEO, previously told Defense One about Hadrian’s expansion plans, and the ethos behind its “factory-as-a-service” offering.
- “Often what we see with customers is these factories have been from the 1950s. The [capital expenditure] is very aged, the layout is bad, and they’re over cost, and they’re one to three years behind schedule,” Power said in July. “What we are doing for these customers is looking at those factories, looking at everything inside of that, rebuilding it…and then operating for them.”
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