NAMI & Lockheed Martin Partner to Qualify Aluminum 3D Printed Aerospace Components in KSA

The National Additive Manufacturing and Innovation Company (NAMI) is a unique joint venture between DUSSUR, a Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) public investment fund that focuses on strategic industries, and AM industry pioneer 3D Systems. In the fall of 2023, NAMI began qualifying metal printed parts for the oil & gas sector. Now, the Middle Eastern service bureau has announced that it is partnering with Lockheed Martin to do the same for aluminum parts in aerospace and defense.

The U.S. defense giant has historically been one of the most active corporate investors in the acceleration of AM adoption: some of its more recent investments include $100 million to satellite manufacturer Terran Orbital in 2022, a company that Lockheed ultimately acquired two years later, and participation in a $12.5 million funding round for factory cell manufacturer Firestorm in 2024. Further, KSA is one of Lockheed’s most important markets outside of the U.S., a nation that the prime has done business in for over 50 years.

3D Systems, meanwhile, has a relationship with Lockheed that goes back at least a decade, and the company recently landed a contract from the U.S. Air Force to continue work on a large-format metal printer tech demonstrator. In addition to more traditional military and aircraft components, 3D Systems has extensive experience with applications like titanium parts for satellites, which are increasingly important to both the defense sector and the AM industry.

Alongside enabling Lockheed Martin to build out its digital manufacturing capacity, the partnership with NAMI also helps fulfill KSA’s Saudi Vision 2030 plan, a strategy aiming to put the nation’s economy on a track towards comprehensive diversification by the start of the next decade.

In a press release about NAMI’s partnership with Lockheed Martin to qualify aluminum parts in KSA, the CEO of NAMI, Eng. Mohammed Swaidan, said, “As a joint venture between 3D Systems and Dussur, we leverage advanced technologies and world-class expertise in [AM] to support Saudi Vision 2030 through localization and the transfer of industrial knowledge. We are proud of our exceptional partnership with Lockheed Martin and firmly believe that [AM] will serve as a key pillar in shaping the future of industry in the Kingdom and enhancing its competitiveness both regionally and globally.”

Brig. Gen. Joseph Rank, Lockheed’s chief executive for Saudi Arabia and Africa, said, “Lockheed Martin is committed to supporting the development of the defense industry in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States. Our partnership with NAMI is a significant milestone in our localization efforts, and we’re proud to work together to advance the Kingdom’s [AM] capabilities while supporting job creation and economic prosperity in both nations.”

Mike Shepard, the VP of Aerospace and Defense at 3D Systems, explained the company’s approach to scaling AM for military hardware production in an interview published earlier this month. Combined with Lockheed Martin’s broad AM background across a full range of defense applications, 3D Systems’ replicable model for moving enterprises from a low to a high level of complexity puts NAMI in a solid position to scale its capabilities at a brisk pace.

In May, the Trump administration announced what it called “the largest defense cooperation pact in U.S. history,” in a $142 billion arms sale to KSA, a deal involving Lockheed and the rest of the U.S.’s largest defense primes. The deal didn’t include Lockheed’s F-35, which KSA has long expressed interest in acquiring, but the Trump administration doesn’t seem to have ruled out the possibility that the U.S. could eventually sell its most expensive weapons system to the desert kingdom.

In any case, there is plenty of materiel for NAMI to print beyond the F-35, and beyond aerospace, including parts for the Royal Saudi Navy. KSA also embarked on the beginnings of its space program in 2018, another facet of Saudi Vision 2030, a project which includes CubeSats.

At the center of the world’s most geopolitically volatile region, maintaining strategic relationships with every power aiming to do business in the Middle East, KSA’s build-out of increased domestic weapons manufacturing capacity could provide the nation with significant leverage as those capabilities improve.

Images courtesy of NAMI