San Diego Defense Industry Faces Growing Drone Contract Rivals – Hoodline

San Diego Defense Industry Faces Growing Drone Contract Rivals  Hoodline

San Diego leads the U.S. in autonomous systems contracts, but the EDC's new roadmap warns rivals are closing in on Pentagon drone dollars. San Diego pulls in about $1.5 billion a year in Pentagon contracts for autonomous and unmanned systems, more than any other region in the country. But local defense leaders gathered Tuesday to deliver a blunter message: that lead is not guaranteed to last, and other cities are now organizing aggressively to take a bigger slice of the drone-dollar pie. The San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation announced the effort at a news conference on Tuesday, unveiling a new Defense Innovation Roadmap meant to help local contractors capture more of the Pentagon's expanding spending on emerging weapons technology, according to KPBS.

The announcement came as other regions are starting to organize and coordinate their own marketing campaigns to attract defense manufacturers and contracts, intensifying competition for work that has long concentrated in San Diego. The roadmap itself, released at an event at Firestorm Labs on October 27, was published by the San Diego Regional EDC, which laid out the scale of what's at stake. The region receives an average of $11.6 billion a year in Department of War contracts and grants and is home to more than 6,700 defense-related assets, including military installations, contractors and research institutions, the