The U.S. Marine Corps has quietly crossed an important threshold in military drone development by creating its first fully NDAA compliant unmanned aircraft with no China sourced components, a compact and modular platform known as HANX, developed by the 2nd Maintenance Battalion, as reported on the U.S. Marines website.
HANX is not a sleek contractor showroom prototype or a years long acquisition program, but a practical drone designed by Marines for Marines, capable of switching roles from reconnaissance to one way attack duties with minimal changes, and built largely using 3D printed components that can be produced and repaired in house.
This approach replaces the slow and expensive traditional procurement cycle with something closer to a battlefield workshop mindset, where speed, adaptability, and security matter more than polished marketing slides.
Built by Marines, not contractors
The driving force behind HANX is U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Henry David Volpe, whose background reads less like a defense industry résumé and more like a maker space success story, starting with 3D printing and Lego robotics in middle school and continuing through automotive maintenance studies before joining the Corps.
“Some explosive ordnance disposal Marines are about to buy 20 of these, and they’re going to be strapping explosives to it. The drone is cheap and easy to change, making it easier to be utilized for a variety of missions throughout the military, compared to all of the drones bought through contractors where we aren’t allowed to modify them.”
– Sgt. Henery David Volpe
After completing boot camp and his specialty training in 2022, Volpe gravitated toward the II Marine Expeditionary Force Innovation Campus, where Marines are trained in robotics, additive manufacturing, and advanced production techniques, and it did not take long for him to realize that existing Marine Corps drones were more expensive than necessary.
Volpe believed he could build something far cheaper without giving up critical capabilities, while also eliminating the need for third and fourth party contractors, keeping the entire design and production pipeline inside the military.
Working alongside a small but highly skilled team including Chief Warrant Officer 3 Matthew Pine, Cpl. Liam Smyth, Staff Sgt. Jonathan Borjesson, Cpl. Isauro Vazquezgarcia, and Cpl. Corven Lacy, the group designed, prototyped, refined, and finalized HANX in just 90 days, which in military development terms is roughly the speed of light.
Why NDAA compliance matters
One of HANX’s most important features has nothing to do with flight time or payload capacity and everything to do with trust, since the drone is fully compliant with the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act, meaning it avoids components from restricted countries such as China.
For military drones, this is a major challenge, as many off the shelf electronics and flight components originate from Chinese suppliers, raising concerns about supply chain security, firmware vulnerabilities, and potential backdoors that could compromise missions.
By building HANX without these components, the Marine Corps significantly reduces those risks, while also proving that secure alternatives can be developed quickly when the right tools and talent are available.
There are still hurdles ahead, including the fact that production currently depends on specialized infrastructure at the innovation campus, and that assembly, maintenance, and calibration require trained personnel, but these are solvable problems rather than deal breakers.
DroneXL’s Take
HANX is a reminder that the future of military drones may look less like polished defense contracts and more like smart, modular systems built close to the operators who actually use them, and while this project is clearly aimed at combat applications, the lessons around secure supply chains, rapid iteration, and in house manufacturing are highly relevant to the broader drone industry, especially as concerns over component origins and digital trust continue to grow.
Photo credit: Sgt. Alfonso Livrieri / DVIDS
