U.S. tests Venom autonomous strike aircraft after 71-day development cycle.

US companies Mach Industries and Divergent Technologies completed the first flight of the Venom autonomous strike aircraft on February 17, 2026, only 71 days after the drone's conception.

On February 17, 2026, the U.S. companies Divergent Technologies and Mach Industries announced that they completed the first flight of the newly-developed Venom autonomous strike aircraft. The prototype moved from concept to flight-ready configuration in 71 days through a digitally integrated design and 3D printed manufacturing process. The program, aligned with the Pentagon’s affordable mass and rapid acquisition strategy, is positioned as a test case for rapid defense production and affordable mass unmanned systems.
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Concerning workshare distribution on the Venom autonomous strike aircraft program, Mach Industries led system architecture and subsystems integration, while Divergent Technologies handled digital airframe design and 3D-printed airframe production. (Picture source: Divergent Technologies and Mach Industries)

The first flight of the Venom prototype marked the unveiling of a new autonomous strike aircraft developed from initial design to flight-ready configuration in 71 days. The Venom drone was built as a flight demonstration vehicle to illustrate how a compressed hardware development cycle enabled by digital engineering and additive manufacturing could work. The companies stated that the program moved from concept to first flight in just over two months, and they positioned the timeline as evidence of a shift toward software-driven defense manufacturing. Photographs released with the announcement showed U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth alongside company executives, indicating visibility at senior levels within the Department of Defense.

However, the two companies did not disclose range, payload, endurance, propulsion specifications, autonomy architecture, or projected unit cost, leaving operational parameters undefined at this stage. Mach Industries, founded in 2023 and headquartered in Huntington Beach, California, led the establishment of baseline requirements and system architecture for the Venom. The company stated that it leveraged avionics and simulation derived from existing flight-proven technology stacks and implemented a modular open-systems architecture to accelerate development from concept to flight. A common simulation and controls foundation was used to support high-fidelity prototyping and iterative refinement across hardware and software.

Mach indicated that this framework enabled parallel development and accelerated validation during the 71-day cycle. The company also stated that it vertically integrates propulsion, weapons, and manufacturing processes to reduce development timelines and increase control over production scalability. Divergent Technologies, founded in 2014 and based in Torrance, California, executed the digital design and additive manufacturing of the Venom structure using its Divergent Adaptive Production System. Instead of assembling the airframe from hundreds of individual components, the company 3D-printed large monolithic aluminum assemblies, including wings, fuselage sections, skins, and control surfaces.

This approach reduced part count and removed the need for traditional aerospace tooling, which can extend production lead times and require high upfront capital expenditure. The manufacturing workflow sends optimized design instructions directly to industrial 3D printers to produce application-specific alloy nodes at scale. These printed structures are then assembled through a universal robotic assembly process that does not require design-specific tools. The Venom could also be linked to the Pentagon’s new concept of “affordable mass,” which emphasizes the rapid production of large numbers of relatively low-cost unmanned systems.

Senior defense official Alex Lovett, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Mission Capabilities within the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering, connected the 71-day cycle to accelerating rapid acquisition and supporting the “Drone Dominance” vision. The companies framed the timeline as relevant to delivering urgent, low-cost munitions to operational forces. They also referenced lessons from recent conflicts, such as Ukraine, where inexpensive drones have influenced force design and air defense planning. Despite this positioning, no specific mission profile, weapons configuration, or cost target for Venom was disclosed. 

Mach stated that over the last 18 months, it has taken four products from concept to flight test through rapid iteration, and it attributed part of that speed to the adaptive digital manufacturing stack used in the Venom effort. The company also reported that it recently secured a production contract but did not identify the customer, production quantity, or contract value. In January 2026, Mach introduced the Dart, a surface-to-air counter-drone system designed to counter Group 1-3 unmanned aerial systems using custom ground radars, integrated sensors, and low-cost interceptors.

The Dart can be mounted on launch stations, military vehicles, or fixed structures, and operators can deploy single units or scale to larger numbers to address coordinated drone swarms. Mach stated that the Dart is designed to keep interception costs below the value of incoming threats and that it aims to scale production to high volumes. Divergent outlined its broader industrial model as an end-to-end software-hardware production system applicable to automotive, aerospace, and defense sectors. The Divergent Adaptive Production System uses in-house AI-enabled engineering software to optimize structural performance and manufacturing constraints before additive production. The company reported more than 700 filed patents and identified Los Angeles, California, as its headquarters, with Kevin Czinger as founder and executive chairman and Lukas Czinger as co-founder, president, and CEO.

Kevin Czinger and his son Lukas Czinger are also the founders of the American automotive company that produces the Czinger 21C hypercar, whose chassis and many structural parts are built using an advanced 3D-printing approach based on the same digital engineering and adaptive production system used for the Venom. Divergent stated that its approach can reduce cycle time by a factor of ten, accelerate new program development by two to five times, reduce part count by up to forty-five times, achieve mass reductions relative to carbon fiber structures, reduce variable costs by two to three times, reduce development costs by two times, and eliminate upfront capital expenditure on design-specific tooling. It also stated that it plans to produce thousands of airframes annually using its additive manufacturing infrastructure.

Written by Jérôme Brahy

Jérôme Brahy is a defense analyst and documentalist at Army Recognition. He specializes in naval modernization, aviation, drones, armored vehicles, and artillery, with a focus on strategic developments in the United States, China, Ukraine, Russia, Türkiye, and Belgium. His analyses go beyond the facts, providing context, identifying key actors, and explaining why defense news matters on a global scale.