The Office of Strategic Capital (OSC), the War Department's lending arm, signed a conditional loan commitment of up to $820 million with Performance Drone Works on 31 July to build high-volume US manufacturing of drone components1. Not a research grant and not a services contract. A loan, repayable, aimed squarely at the component layer that the Section 232 proclamation now taxes most heavily on import.
Sequencing matters here. The commitment predates the proclamation by a fortnight, so the lending decision was not made against a published tariff schedule; both instruments nonetheless point at the same shortage. Public money is going into the parts nobody in America currently makes at volume, at the moment importing those parts becomes expensive and, for a firm that commits to a factory, temporarily free.
The purchasing side moved days later. Joint Interagency Task Force 401 upgraded its Counter-UAS marketplace on 3 August so that military units, domestic law enforcement and allied governments can identify and buy validated systems through one vetted channel2. Nine nations signed a letter of intent behind that marketplace at Eurosatory in June. A vetted catalogue converts a one-off award into a standing route to market for whoever is already listed on it, which is a quieter form of industrial policy than a tariff and a longer-lasting one.
