Divergent Technologies and Mach Industries announced a partnership to deliver Venom, a prototype flight demonstration aircraft showing hardware development at software speed.
Mach Industries established the baseline requirements and architecture using the avionics and simulation from existing tech stacks with a modular, open-systems architecture to accelerate development from concept to flight. Divergent created the digital design and 3D print of the Venom structure, including wings, fuselage, skins, and control surfaces as monolithic assemblies rather than conventional multi-part builds.
"Going from inception to flight in 71 days is a clear demonstration of what's possible when Divergent's Adaptive Production System is utilized from day one," said Lukas Czinger, co-founder and CEO of Divergent, in a statement. "Most importantly, Divergent will drive the rapid scale-up of this system, producing thousands of airframes annually. Partnering with Mach has been an immediate win and reflects two mission-aligned, innovative companies executing at maximum pace."
Enabled by its Adaptive Production System (DAPSTM), Divergent said it can collapse traditional multi-hundred-part assemblies into unified additively manufactured structures to accelerate production and dramatically reduce overall part count.
"Over the last 18 months Mach has taken four products from concept to flight test through rapid iteration, and Divergent's adaptive tech stack has been instrumental in accelerating that iteration," said Ethan Thornton, founder and CEO of Mach, in a statement. "Mach's selection for a production contract is the first of many opportunities to show not only speed to prototype, but speed to scaled manufacturing."
Together, Divergent and Mach Industries are demonstrating a new model for autonomous defense systems, replacing tooling-heavy aerospace processes with a software-defined manufacturing approach that enables rapid iteration, scalable production, and speed to field.
