Britain’s Defence Secretary has ordered an internal investigation into the British Army’s use of Bambu Lab FDM 3D printers to fabricate FPV attack drones during a live military exercise in Kenya.
According to the DailyMail, defence minister Luke Pollard confirmed this month that a cyber assessment is now underway to evaluate the security risks attached to the use of cloud-connected additive manufacturing hardware in operational settings.
The concern is specific: under China’s National Intelligence Law, Shenzhen-based Bambu Lab can be compelled to share data with the state, and the 3D printers were used to produce weaponised UAVs in the field.
The exercise was Bull Storm, which ran from May 2025 near Nanyuki, Kenya. Major Stephen Watts of the 3rd Battalion, The Rifles Regiment, led the effort, 3D printing FPV drone airframes based on the Edinburgh Drone Company’s Dirk 5 model from files emailed to the team in-theatre. Per-unit cost came out at £400, against roughly £2,000 for comparable off-the-shelf platforms.
The Risks of Cloud-Connected Manufacturing
The MoD has not disclosed what data, if any, the 3D printers transmitted or whether build files were exposed during the exercise. The investigation will determine what security requirements apply to cloud-based AM hardware in defence use and whether current procurement meets them.
That procurement is already under financial strain, with the MoD carrying a reported £2.5 million budget shortfall for the coming financial year, and defence analyst Robert Clark told The Telegraph that cost pressure is driving hardware choices that security considerations would otherwise rule out. Clark called the decision to use Bambu Lab equipment “outrageous” and tied it directly to the budget gap.
Notably, the Starmer government has made closer ties with Beijing a stated priority, and critics including former senior security officials argue that posture is making clean security calls harder across a range of decisions, including this one. China accounts for 5.5% of British trade.
The Army’s AM programme itself is not under review, and the investigation is framed as a step toward securing its expansion, but the broader context makes that framing harder to take at face value.
Last year, the UK Government’s Modern Industrial Strategy pledged £4.3 billion to advanced manufacturing over five years, including AM, with business investment in the sector projected to nearly double to £39 billion annually by 2035.
The more pointed question is whether a defence procurement environment shaped by budget pressure can reliably exclude hardware that poses data security risks when cheaper alternatives carry them.
Cost Savings vs. National Security
The MoD’s own numbers make the procurement calculus clear enough: 3D printing 15% of the UK’s defence inventory could save £110 million over 15 years, with an annual net benefit of up to £35.5 million thereafter, according to a DIU-commissioned report. That figure helps explain why the Army was trialling field fabrication in Kenya at all: the exercise was not an outlier but a direct expression of MoD policy.
The review must now determine whether the procurement qualification process explicitly prioritized financial KPIs over the due diligence standards required for field-deployed hardware. When the manufacturer’s firmware controversy surfaced in early 2025, it emerged that Bambu Lab had received partial funding from IDG Capital, a firm that had appeared on the US Department of Defense’s (DoD) list of companies with Chinese military ties.
IDG was removed from that list in December 2024, but the fact that the association existed at all had been publicly flagged by a competing manufacturer. The inquiry underway will have to account for whether that information was available to procurement decision-makers and, if so, how it was weighed against the cost savings the hardware offered.
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Featured image shows a 3D printed drone, with the British Army’s Bambu Lab 3D printer in the background. Photo via the British Army.
