Anduril Industries Arsenal-1 Ohio Announcement Is a Big Deal for Two Key Reasons

Without key changes, Ohio will remain a dead state walking in which its job and population growth are tepid, as its best and brightest flee for greener pastures that offer greater opportunities.

Several years ago, I started watching Joe Lonsdale’s “American Optimist” podcast in which he interviews entrepreneurs, innovators, historians, and other fascinating people. One of the episodes focused on Palmer Luckey and his new company, Anduril. Luckey talked about his creation of Oculus Rift, which he sold to Facebook, and Anduril. The interview intrigued me enough that I started following Luckey and his company, hoping to invest in it once it went public, which it still hasn’t. Thus, I’m fairly familiar with Luckey and Anduril. The announcement recently that Anduril is building Arsenal-1 in southern Columbus near Rickenbacker International Airport is truly exciting news. The $1 billion facility "will span 5 million square feet and create 4,008 jobs at full scale by 2035 [that will be an] autonomous weapon system facility.” Anduril expects the facility to be operational by July 2026. In discussing the plant, CEO Brian Schimpf stated, "The facility will combine scalable software-driven manufacturing to enable the rapid mass production of autonomous weapons and systems.”

In stark contrast to the Intel announcement, this announcement should be viewed very positively. Why? Because unlike Intel, Anduril is a new, thriving company pushing cutting edge technology to revolutionize the defense industry. The upside potential of Anduril is enormous. Intel, as I’ve discussed, was and is a company in crisis that has been bleeding cash and market share for years in an industry in which it is far behind its competitors. If Intel ever opens the facilities it is building in Licking County, it would be an enormous surprise. I doubt it will live up to the hype pushed by the DeWine-Husted Administration and JobsOhio. I believe the Anduril facility, however, will far surpass the Intel project and become a true game-changer for Ohio.

More importantly, I strongly believe that the Anduril project strengthens the case I’ve made over the years to build a world-class airport at the Rickenbacker complex. As I’ve discussed, Port Columbus (CMH) is land-locked and limited. It has empty gates in its existing terminal while early activities are underway to add another terminal. The business case just doesn’t exist to pour more taxpayer resources into CMH, as no airline is going to change hub locations for such a small airport. Shifting CMH funding to build a Denver International Airport-like facility down at Rickenbacker combined with eliminating the defective JobsOhio and using its funding to build at Rickenbacker would create an enormous draw for Ohio. It would allow our leaders to have fruitful discussions with the CEOs of the major airlines to convince them to move hubs from the lake effect riddled Chicago area (and Minneapolis and Detroit and Boston and New York and Philadelphia) to the much more weather stable south Central Ohio area. Once built, Ohio could shutdown CMH, Cincinnati’s airport (in Kentucky—seriously), and Dayton’s airport. Colorado took this bold move when in closed the landlocked Stapleton Airport in Denver and built DIA out on the eastern plains twenty-six miles outside of Denver. Denver is booming due to DIA, which has rapidly become America’s 3rd busiest airport. There is no reason Ohio can’t do the same thing down at Rickenbacker.

For businesses and leisure travelers, being able to fly to most markets on one flight versus having to fly to an airline hub to get to where you want to go is vitally important. There are not many domestic markets an Ohioan can reach from CMH, Cincinnati, or Cleveland, and only a handful of international markets (mostly in Canada). Our ability to lure businesses to Ohio (not just Central Ohio) would skyrocket with a world-class airport. As I detailed previously, the additional driving time for Cincinnati and Dayton travelers to get to Rickenbacker is less than the time they would spend driving to Kentucky and on a connecting flight (i.e., one flight with added drive time is shorter than two flights with potential delay and cancellation risks). Ohio’s aviation industry took another turn south last week when PSA Airlines, which flies as a subsidiary of American Airlines, announced it was relocating its corporate headquarters from the Dayton area to Charlotte, North Carolina (as Chiquita Brands did several years ago due to the lack of direct domestic and international flights from Ohio).

JobsOhio and Ohio are giving Anduril roughly $500 million in tax breaks and incentives to build Arsenal-1. JobsOhio’s other big projects have gone belly up. First, the proposed PTT Global Chemical cracker plant in Belmont County never materialized due to “market conditions” despite JobsOhio spending over $50 million. Next, the 2,000-worker Peloton plant in Wood County shutdown before ever producing a single bike again due to “market conditions." Over $100 million was spent by Ohioans on the mothballed plant. Lastly, when announced in October 2022, the LG Energy Solutions-Honda joint entity claimed it wanted to hire over 2,500 Ohioans "to produce lithium-ion batteries in the U.S. to power Honda and Acura EV models for the North American market.” The last picture posted on the homepage is from October 2024, with the last news update from November 26, 2024. The plant is supposed to be operational by the end of 2025. JobsOhio committed $237 million for the plant. According to its website, the facility in Fayette County has hired 200 people and has nineteen open positions, which doesn’t instill much confidence the plant will materialize as promised. With the end of the Biden Administration’s Electric Vehicle (EV) mandate and the lack of consumer interest in EVs, one has to wonder if the LG Energy Solutions-Honda facility in Fayette County also will close down due to “market conditions.”

It seems that JobsOhio is pretty bad at predicting where markets are headed, which casts their actions more as a chimpanzee throwing darts at a wall hoping one hits a bullseye than wise investors of our funds. As I’ve argued for over a decade, instead of having a bunch of failing JobsOhio pseudo-bureaucrats try to pick winners and losers who bribe companies to come or stay here with taxpayer funds, Ohio would be far better off if policymakers finally made the tough choices needed to make Ohio truly competitive with other states via broad-based economic reforms. To do that, they should enact the following Reaganesque bold color ideas:

• Eliminate the state income tax and John Kasich’s expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare (the former can’t be done without doing the latter);

• Enact right-to-work;

• Build a world-class airport at Rickenbacker by getting rid of JobsOhio and using its funding for the airport;

• Freeze state spending for at least four years to give taxpayers a break given skyrocketing spending over the last fourteen years;

• Streamline local governments to reduce income, sales, and property taxes (Ohio has the 4th highest number of local taxing entities); and

• Rebalance state funding between higher education, which gets too much (85% of funding for 15% of K-12 graduates), and technology-trade, which gets too little (15% of funding for 85% of K-12 graduates) so Ohio’s workforce is the best available in America.

Without these changes, Ohio will remain a dead state walking in which its job and population growth are tepid, as its best and brightest flee for greener pastures that offer greater opportunities and prosperity.

With the launch of the federal Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), several states are launching their own DOGE versions of this entity. Once again, however, I was first out of the gate on pushing serious government reform. When I announced my exploratory run for governor in January 2023, I expressly highlighted how I would “prune state government”:

Within two weeks of being sworn-in, I will appoint a team to conduct an A-to-Z review of every department, office, program, board, and commission in state government to determine if it should be eliminated, remain in existence, or, if getting good results, expanded.This review won't be a typical soft-ball gimmick focused on issuing press releases, but will be like an endoscopy and colonoscopy that dig deeply into the bowels of state government to ensure its healthy and, where it isn't, fix it or flush it.

I also aimed my reforms at local government in my announcement declaring that “[w]ithin six months of being sworn-in, I will name a commission to dig aggressively into the issue to make recommendations on what Ohio needs to do to streamline government and, most importantly, lower the local tax burden on your income, property, and consumption. That commission will have one year to produce solutions for voters to approve.” I’m glad some policymakers get the importance of substantial government reforms. I just wish those policymakers lived in Ohio, instead of in Washington, D.C., and other states.

P.S. In support of my last piece on holding China legally accountable for the global pandemic, a strong majority of Americans (63%) agree with me, with 78% of Republicans agreeing, 58% of Independents agreeing, and even 53% of Democrats agreeing. Congress needs to act by limiting the sovereignty of China as I proposed back in 2023. The sooner, the better.