At RAPID + TCT 2026 SME Media Editor-in-chief Steve Plumb sat down with Foster Ferguson, Vice President of Industrial Business for Stratasys. They discussed how additive manufacturing (AM) is reshaping the aerospace and defense industries, covering topics ranging from the supply chain, scaling digital technologies, and the current role of artificial intelligence (AI) in AM.
Ferguson explains how aerospace and defense have helped drive significant innovation in the AM industry in the past few years, especially because these sectors have stringent standards and qualifications for parts that AM processes are required to meet. Despite the high stakes for these parts, there's demand across the board for AM in these industries, including in the United States military.
To meet this demand, Stratasys is working to make AM platforms more accessible digitally in an effort to modernize the AM supply chain. According to Ferguson, partnering with leading OEM's and providing ownership of digital files is helping to transform the supply chain, leading to positive changes like right-to-repair policies, which are particularly relevant to military use cases of AM.
Plumb and Ferguson wrap up the interview discussing Stratasys' near-term state, which includes the software side of AM, post-processing, and industry partnerships. He highlights that the future of the company will focus on five main use cases: production parts, automotive tooling, industrial components, medical and healthcare products, and, of course, aerospace and defense.