Members of Defense Contract Management Agency’s Blue List team visited units in Hawaii during the biennial Rim of the Pacific exercise to see emerging capabilities on the islands July 7-9.

The group engaged Army, Navy and Marine Corps stakeholders working on developing unmanned systems and additive manufacturing technologies.

“We'd been extremely busy and getting pulled left and right and talking with people, and so it's been a really good visit from that standpoint to understand how they're thinking and what their needs are,” said Army Maj. Eric Scholl, Blue List program integrator.

During the engagement, agency experts visited the 25th Infantry Division’s “Lightning Lab” at Schofield Barracks.

“They are building their own drones for units here,” Scholl said. “We got to tour their facility where they produce and have their printers and where they build their drones.”

The Blue List team then moved to one of the ranges on base where the Naval Information Warfare Center was training one of their targeting algorithms to identify UAS, and then to a range across the island where they were training a counter-UAS platform to identify drones coming off of the water onto the land.

The team also toured The Forge, an advanced manufacturing facility that uses 3D printing, precision casting, forging, and rapid prototyping for the Navy and joint forces.

“It's where they're standing up production on the islands to be able to produce for the fleet as they need items,” Scholl said. “They're developing a hub and spoke model, so the hub would be here on the main island.”

They also toured their foundry, where they smelted metal in a mobilized container that they had repurposed, before moving to the Joint Advanced Manufacturing Cell hosted by the Naval Postgraduate School. The JAMC produced replacement parts and supported distributed logistics.

“We were watching in real time as they were processing production requests,” Scholl said. “It wasn’t just drones, but it's really any piece or part that the fleet might need, both in plastics and in metal.”

Scholl said they briefed them on the Blue List, how DCMA would be able to connect with them and their efforts.

“Anecdotally, we ran into range control, and we asked how range control approves flights on base,” Scholl said. “Range control basically said to us ‘if it's on the Blue List, I let them fly it. If it's not on the Blue List, I don't let them fly it.’”

The Blue List is an aggregated list of compliant unmanned systems and components approved for purchase and operation by the War Department.

Air Force Col. Dustin Thomas, DCMA Unmanned Systems-Experimental commander, said the anecdote from range control highlights how the Blue List can serve as a compliance standard.

“If we don't have these compliance standards set, then everyone's going to use slightly different rules,” Thomas said. “Trust in platforms and components becomes something that continuously grows rather than something established once during certification.”

The Blue List’s shift in focus from risk management to include compliance with standards is intended to support unit commander’s desires to rapidly get trusted equipment into the hands of their end users.

“The standards that we're building are there for a reason,” Thomas said. “They're there so that we can continue fighting after day one.”

The Blue List was transferred to DCMA from the Defense Innovation Unit in 2025 and takes a holistic approach to continuously and rapidly vet commercial UAS technology for DOW.