Seen This Movie Many Times: The Fragility of Military Novelty

By Carl Cagliarini

Earlier this week, I saw a post from one of Firestorm’s founders. It responded to news that a US parts factory had been struck in Ukraine and highlighted the Firestorm X-Cell concept of operations. The post stated:

"Imagine this is a US company producing critical defense systems from a fixed facility. The implications of destroying an entire manufacturing capability with one strike could be devastating, considering the necessary volume of weapons required for sustained combat. We propose moving defense production to locations where it’s needed most, and moving when necessary. Placing drone factories in remote regions that are difficult to locate. Contested logistics, contested manufacturing, and contested targeting."

I replied :

"Unfortunately, unless it’s under several feet of ocean and moves constantly, nearly anything can be located with great ease, almost instantly."

The response I received was:

"Of course, Carl, nothing’s perfect. I’ll begin the waterproofing… 🤿"

Levity has its place, but my point was serious. I was referencing the nuclear submarine deterrent: and that nothing on land is immune from detection or targeting. The Firestorm X-Cell, promoted as revolutionary, risks the very fate described in its own founder’s post: destroy one manufacturing node, and the system collapses.

The idea that containerized production solves this problem ignores the hard realities of engineering and logistics. Producing a single drone such as the tempest, which is nothing special, realistically takes more than 24 - 48 hours under perfect conditions. Then how do you get it to a take-off point ? Anyone familiar with additive manufacturing, entry-level or advanced, knows sustained operation beyond a few days is not something steeped in reliability; in non-stop day after day it is prayer. Mean Time Between Failure is not theoretical; it sets the ceiling on ambition.

The more troubling issue is the absence of critical scrutiny. The pattern is familiar in the defence tech sector: secure venture capital, and suddenly the concept is validated. Investors are dazzled by slide decks heavy on disruption promise , light on durability, and rarely ask the basic operational questions: How does it perform under sustained load? How does it scale? How does it survive a determined adversary?

These are not minor oversights; they are existential due diligence flaws. A single strike on a fragile, containerized production unit erases not just the machinery, but the premise itself. Illusions are not capabilities. In war, illusions kill.

Defence innovation cannot continue to drift into Silicon Valley habits, where fanciful hype buys time and failure is written off as iteration. On the battlefield, failure is decisive, fatal, and costly. Firestorm’s X-Cell has raised money on a promise that collapses under military strategy. Two containers, three printers, and a slogan about “printing the future at the edge” is theatre, not strategy. It ignores the reality of ten to twenty supply containers and civilian HP trained engineers needed to sustain even modest operations.

The Hard Realities:

1. A single point of failure. Containerized printers are large, heavy, trackable nodes. They need transport, fuel, parts, power, operators, and security. They cannot print their way out of interdiction. One disabled box, and the capability collapses. Fragile nodes are not systems.

2. Production speed is combat irrelevance. A nine-hour print cycle plus assembly and calibration is a queue, not a flow. Combat tempo is measured in minutes, sometimes hours. Stockpiles deliver power now; printers deliver potential later. Throughput decides wars, not latency.

3. Novelty has no moat. Exclusive deals with HP or glossy partnerships impress investors but do not protect a concept that can be copied instantly. The first image of a containerized printer is the last time it confers advantage. Battlefield performance does not care about branding.

History’s warning:

Expeditionary disasters share the same DNA: spectacle mistaken for sufficiency, mobility mistaken for logistics.

• Gallipoli: Mobility without sustainment turned bold plans into a mass graveyard.

• Napoleon in Russia: Reach outran supply; courage could not replace calories.

• Market Garden: A corridor dependent on fragile nodes collapsed when one link failed.

• Dien Bien Phu: A fortress designed to lure the enemy became a siege camp when resupply faltered.

These were not just tactical blunders; they were failures of underestimating the basics sustainment.

The Structural Test:

Three tests separate capability from novelty:

• Resilience: Can it survive attrition, adapt to damage, endure? If survival depends on a clean environment and narrow technical skills, fragility is guaranteed.

• Redundancy: What happens if one node is destroyed? Redundancy is dull, expensive, and unphotogenic, but it is industrial courage. Distributed depots stacked with ready systems are boring but resilient. A few printers in a container is theatre until it is one among hundreds. Then injection molding replaces nine-hour prints with minutes-long output.

• Throughput: What is the actual rate of combat power entering the fight? Print speed is irrelevant. What matters is how fast losses can be replaced under pressure. This is arithmetic, not branding. Napoleon’s fate was written by supply wagons, not eagles. Modern battlefields punish those who mistake image for inventory.

Everything else is marketing.

Start-ups chase novelty because it photographs well and captivates VCs. Venture capital enables it because the upside lies in the next funding round, not survival in conflict. Mobile containers sound compelling, the word expeditionary sounds very special ops, but words fall away to cold realities and equally they do not deter enemies. Industrial courage wins wars: factories, stockpiles, infrastructure that absorbs attrition.

Firestorm’s LinkedIn post has opened a debate. Precision equipment requires recalibration; heavy machinery demands disassembly and reassembly. Even “mobile” production remains anchored to fragile logistics. Distributed manufacturing across hardened sites, supplemented by compact additive systems, is boring but proven and credible.

Anyone who understands production as in the factory floor, six sigma , Kanban , Kaizen. Poka Yoke, JIT, TQM, 5S and especially Heijunka and Jidoka, like myself and my production director, who taught Chinese companies how to scale with quality intact,Understand the realities. In additive manufacturing as per the X-Cell, factoring in filament, resins, spare parts, engines, avionics, and electronics transforms Firestorm’s two neat containers into a convoy of fifteen to twenty container trucks. It is slow-moving, trackable, and when static reliant on uninterrupted power. Emits tremendous heat, noise, and then invites thick and fast kinetic attention.

I have met members of the Firestorm team great guys; true patriots and I credit them for other ideas which makes them one to watch. But as for the X-Cell is a concept history has already judged where the wheels come off. Regardless of slide decks or VC funding, a multimillion-dollar logistical sitting duck is likely not going to convince a battlefield commander trained in military conflict and failures, at West Point, Sandhurst, or Annapolis to entertain this Idea. Nothing about it makes sense. As for the notion that spares can be created. Unless it's obsolescence engineering , good luck dealing with the legacy prime defense contractors when you replicate one of their parts.