I suspect 3D printing aircraft parts becomes more viable my the day, especially as the materials, accuracy and reliability improve. I can appreciate that not _e

I suspect 3D printing aircraft parts becomes more viable my the day, especially as the materials, accuracy and reliability improve. I can appreciate that not _everything_ is a candidate for some form of printing, but I can imagine quite a few parts are. Some examples: 1. Highly specialized missions that require custom parts. The mission parameters themselves might be quite volatile, imagine some engineering team cooking up some mission critical sensors at the last moment to be used for this mission only. 2. Small incremental improvements that can be rolled out fleet wide. Usually these aircraft will have at least _some_ issues with the hardware, and the military answer is typically to write more SOPs. Instead they could 3D print a clip to stop that darned wire hitting the hot pipes when you open the panel. 3. Broken parts in remote locations could potentially be fixed whilst in those locations. You don't have to rely on some distribution network to fix your aircraft when you can build a patch and get it through one or more trips safely until a proper service. 4. The ability to semi-break away from the need of manufacturing.