The U.S. Marine Corps is quietly rewriting the economics of airpower, fielding a new generation of small attack drones that cost about $700 each yet promise the kind of precision once reserved for weapons worth hundreds of times more. Built with 3D printers, off-the-shelf components, and no parts from China, these systems are designed to be expendable, lethal, and easy to replace.
Behind the headline price tag is a broader shift in how the Marines think about technology, logistics, and combat. Instead of waiting years for a pristine program of record, Marines are designing and printing their own aircraft in weeks, then pairing them with mass purchases of commercial-style drones to hit an ambitious goal of 10,000 new platforms in a single year.
The $700 HANX drone and the Marine who built it
The most striking symbol of this shift is a small unmanned aircraft known as HANX, a 3D-printed drone that Marines can produce for about $700 apiece. The design was created inside the Marine Corps by a single Sergeant working with a small team, using additive manufacturing techniques to turn digital files into combat hardware. Crucially, the aircraft is built without components from China, a deliberate choice meant to sidestep supply chain vulnerabilities and comply with strict procurement rules on foreign-sourced electronics.
Reporting on the project notes that the Sergeant and fellow Marines used 3D printers to fabricate airframes and integrate low-cost electronics into a fully functional attack drone that can be produced on demand in the field. One account emphasizes that anyone can create a cheap drone, but the challenge is doing it in a way that meets U.S. law while addressing supply chain vulnerabilities. That is why the team focused on National Defense Authorization Act compliance and deliberately excluded certain foreign-sourced components from the design.
From garage project to NDAA-compliant program
What began as an internal experiment has quickly become a showcase for how fast the Marine Corps can move when it empowers its own people. The UAV was designed, built, and tested by Marine Corps personnel from the 2nd Marine Logistics Group in just 90 days, a timeline that would be unthinkable for a traditional defense acquisition program. The UAV effort shows how logistics units, not just aviation squadrons, are now central to drone innovation, since they control the printers, materials, and maintenance expertise needed to keep a fleet of printed aircraft flying.
The Marine behind the design, Marine Sgt Henry David Volpe, is an automotive maintenance technician with the Marine Logistics Group at Camp Lejeune in Nor, not a conventional aerospace engineer. According to official recognition of his work, Marine Sgt Henry David Volpe designed a fully NDAA-compliant drone that can perform reconnaissance tasks and carry a one-kilogram payload, giving small units a way to deliver sensors or munitions without relying on larger aircraft. A separate account notes that the drone, known as HANX, was created by Marines from the 2nd Marine Logistics Group and framed the project alongside financial advice content under the banner of Should You Leave to Your Children in a Trust or as a Gift, an odd juxtaposition that underscores how mainstream the story has become.
Why the Marines want 10,000 drones at the small-unit level
The $700 price tag matters because it fits into a much larger push to flood the force with small unmanned systems. The Marine Corps wants 10,000 new drones this year as it expands training for off-the-shelf systems, a scale that only makes sense if many of those aircraft are cheap enough to lose in combat. The Marine Corps is gearing up to expand its first-person view drone capabilities in the New Year by purchasing 10,000 new platforms, according to government contracting documents and service officials, and that volume requires a mix of commercial buys and in-house innovation.
To support that expansion, The Marine Corps has also announced a standardized training program for small-sized unmanned aerial systems, ensuring that operators, payload specialists, and instructors can handle the influx of new platforms. Reporting on that effort notes that The Marine Corps is gearing up to integrate these drones into everyday training, not just specialized units, which is essential if small teams are going to use systems like HANX as naturally as they use radios or night-vision goggles.
Cheap killers in a world of expensive drones
The $700 HANX sits at the extreme low end of a drone portfolio that still includes far more expensive systems. The Marines, meanwhile, have a separate program to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on small drones, including a plan to acquire 10,000 first-person view platforms at about $4,000 each. One detailed breakdown notes that The Marines are also investing in loitering munitions that can cost about $71,000 a piece, showing how the service is layering ultra-cheap drones with more capable, higher-end strike options.
At the top of that stack are systems like the Rogue 1, a strike drone whose price has recently fallen but still sits orders of magnitude above HANX. The U.S. Marine Corps has reduced the cost of Rogue 1 strike drones to only $70,000, down from about $94,000 per unit, according to reporting on the Price of Rogue 1 Strike Drones for Marines Falls to Only that level. In parallel, the United States the Pentagon has launched a $1 billion program for kamikaze drones, part of a broader effort described as a drone dominance push that envisions up to 300000 unmanned systems. In that context, a $700 printed aircraft is less a curiosity than a logical endpoint of a strategy that prizes quantity, attrition, and constant experimentation.
Industry contracts and the race to arm every squad
Even as Marines print their own aircraft, the service is leaning on industry to deliver more sophisticated precision-strike drones. Anduril Awarded a $23.9 M contract, formally described as a $23.9 Million Contract for US Marine Corps Organic Precision Fires, Light Program, to provide loitering munitions that give small units organic strike capacity against multiple target sets. That program is designed to put guided munitions in the hands of platoons and companies, complementing cheaper drones like HANX that can scout, spot, or carry smaller payloads.
At the same time, the Marine Corps is testing whether industry can deliver 10,000 low-cost drones in a single year at a $4,000 price cap. A newly published Sources Sought notice on SAM shows that the Marine Corps is preparing to acquire up to 10,000 low-cost first-person view drones at that cap, with the goal of providing precision strike capabilities at the small-unit level. Taken together with the 3D-printed HANX and the internal push for 10,000 new platforms, these moves point to a future in which every squad leader can call on a mix of cheap scouts, disposable bombers, and more advanced loitering munitions, all networked into a larger campaign that values mass as much as individual performance.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
