ICON Delivers Largest Robotic Construction Deployment in DoW History at Fort Bliss
EL PASO, Texas, July 28, 2026 — ICON, the global leader in advanced construction technologies, today welcomed U.S. Soldiers to move into the first completed 3D-printed barracks at Fort Bliss, Texas. The Rotational Unit Billeting Area (RUBA) will house up to 560 service members, delivering permanent, energy-resilient infrastructure at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional military construction.
The ten open-bay buildings, totaling more than 78,000 square feet of covered area, were constructed under a $62.8 million production contract awarded by the U.S. Army in December 2025 and executed through a Production Other Transaction Authority (OTA) agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Fort Worth District. Each barracks encompasses 5,772 square feet of conditioned space, built 4x faster than traditional military construction and 9.3% below the USACE benchmark on price per square foot cost. All ten structures were printed in 58 days and fully delivered in seven months, a timeline that would take years under conventional military construction methods, resulting in a $5.2M total savings for the U.S. Army.
"Fort Bliss represents what becomes possible when you stop accepting the status quo in military construction," said Will Hurd, President of ICON Prime. "Ten barracks, 560 beds, six months. That is not an incremental improvement, that is a fundamentally different way to build readiness. ICON Prime exists to bring this capability to scale across the U.S. military and beyond."
The Fort Bliss transient training barracks builds directly on ICON Prime’s prior work at the installation. In 2024, ICON delivered the first UFC-compliant 3D-printed barracks in Army history at Fort Bliss – a nearly 8,000-square-foot structure that served as the proof-of-concept that unlocked this production-scale award. This summer, ICON broke ground on a RUBA at Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) and Fort Polk, Louisiana. The first phase of the contract will fund eight 3D-printed facilities designed to support Soldiers through reception, staging, onward movement, and integration (RSOI) operations at JRTC.
The DoW and ICON have together validated robotic construction through more than 65 full-scale wall tests and over 100 component tests of the ICON wall system, with additional full-scale seismic design tests underway to continue advancing the state of the art.
The speed advantage of ICON’s automated construction technology translates directly to cost savings. Compressing a $62.8 million project from a 24-month conventional timeline to nine months, including contracting and construction, saved an estimated $5.6 million in overhead alone, more than the cost of a single barracks building. The structures replace temporary facilities that had exceeded their intended service life, providing durable, energy-resilient permanent housing with reduced lifecycle costs.
The RUBA completion marks a significant milestone in ICON Prime's Rebuild Military Readiness mission and demonstrates the OTA acquisition pathway as a viable mechanism for rapidly fielding emerging construction technologies across the U.S. Army and Department of War.
For more information on ICON’s robotic construction technology visit www.iconbuild.com.
About ICON
ICON is the global leader in construction technology, developing robotics, intelligent software systems, and advanced materials that are changing the way the world builds on Earth and beyond.
About ICON Prime
ICON Prime is ICON's dedicated defense and space division, deploying robotic construction systems to rebuild military readiness, strengthen national security infrastructure, and extend human presence beyond Earth. Led by President Will Hurd, a former CIA officer and U.S. Congressman who served on the House Homeland Security and Armed Services Committees, ICON Prime works with the U.S. Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and NASA to deliver mission-critical infrastructure at the speed and quality modern operations demand.
