Pickaway County, Ohio

Pickaway County is a county in central Ohio, United States, that has become a focal point of US defence manufacturing through the location of Anduril Industries' Arsenal-1 facility. Arsenal-1, a 5-million-square-foot manufacturing campus backed by a $310 million JobsOhio grant, began producing the YFQ-44A Fury Collaborative Combat Aircraft ahead of its original July 2026 schedule, shipping its first unit in late March 2026. Anduril posted manufacturing, quality engineering, and production technician roles for its Roadrunner autonomous interceptor drone at the same site on 22 April 2026, confirming a second platform entering production at Arsenal-1 by end-2026.

Pickaway County sits within the Columbus metropolitan area, which Ohio has successfully positioned as a hub for advanced manufacturing and technology. The county offers a combination of available industrial land, logistics infrastructure, and state government support through JobsOhio, the state's private economic development organisation. The Arsenal-1 facility, when fully ramped, will employ several hundred workers at the site and represents one of the largest single defence manufacturing investments in Ohio's recent history.

The concentration of autonomous weapons production at Arsenal-1 in Pickaway County has strategic implications beyond Ohio's economy. The site is intended to become the production base for multiple Anduril platforms, including the YFQ-44A Fury, Roadrunner, and potentially further systems as the company's defence portfolio grows. Its early-to-schedule operation has been cited by Pentagon officials as evidence that the US defence industrial base can scale attritable autonomous systems faster than traditional acquisition timelines suggest.