Designing workshop space for uncrewed aircraft

Additive manufacturing promises adaptable small drones, but it also transfers part of the production system into the ship. Small uncrewed aircraft make the idea more plausible than trying to build large drones aboard, but they still need space that must be allowed for in the ship's design. Older cruisers and other globally deployed warships devoted substantial volume to workshops because distant operations required self-maintenance. Modern ships retain some workshops, usually in a smaller proportion of the hull. A Star Trek comparison makes the same design point: laboratories and engineering shops are sensible on an exploration ship, while USS Voyager appears to have too little self-maintenance capacity and redundancy for its mission. Future warships may need to recover more workshop space and keep repair skills practiced between breakdowns.