During RIMPAC 2026 the U.S. Navy and Naval Postgraduate School demonstrated a logistics chain in which parts were fabricated, moved by a digitally crewed surface vessel and assembled for operational testing in less than 24 hours. Separately, Firestorm Labs says its containerized xCell produced more than 1,000 parts and supported assembly of 12 Squall FPV aircraft aboard USS Essex; those quantities are company-reported, and Squall is an FPV platform rather than a conventional loitering munition. That demonstration is best read as progress in the structural layer, not a finished weapon. What defines a loitering munition is what a forward cell still cannot make: a seeker, terminal guidance, a datalink and an integrated warhead.

The experiment matters because it separates two industrial problems that are often misunderstood as one. The structural layer – airframes, housings, mounts and tooling – can increasingly be printed, machined or repaired near the operating unit. The constrained layer – propulsion, power, guidance, communications, sensing and energetic payloads – remains tied to specialized factories, qualified processes and tightly controlled materials. Naval Postgraduate School trials make the boundary visible: xCell could produce modular airframe sections, but the broader system still depended on externally supplied power and equipment.