Anduril Industries on Monday said it is investing more than $75 million in its Mississippi-based solid rocket motor (SRM) facility to dramatically expand production to meet increasing demand for the engines that power tactical missiles.
The investment will allow Anduril to increase propellant mixing and rocket motor production from 600 to more than 6,000 “tactical-scale” motors annually.
L3Harris Technologies
‘ [LHX] Aerojet Rocketdyne, one of two legacy domestic SRM producers along with Northrop Grumman [NOC], produced about 115,000 rocket motors in 2023 ranging from SRMs the size of a small car down to palm-size.
The Mississippi Solid Rocket Motor Complex in McHenry includes a 450-acre propellant mixing and SRM production facility that the company said “has been sited for millions of pounds of explosives” and produces motors up to 42 inches in diameter. The investment will also be used to renovate 92,000 square feet of factory space to include “adding advanced robotics equipment and modular manufacturing systems” for faster production and lower cost than legacy producers, Anduril said.
In addition to Anduril, startups Ursa Major and X-Bow Systems are vying to become new entrants in the SRM space as the U.S. looks to increase production of tactical missiles to meet the needs of the Defense Department and allies and partners. The Navy in late 2023 and early 2024 awarded all three companies contracts to design, build, and test SRMs for the second stage of the Standard Missile (SM)-6 as the service looks to expand the rocket motor supply base and extend the range and capabilities of the ship-fired anti-air missile (Defense Daily, April 30).
Northrop Grumman also received Navy contracts to develop new SRMs for both the first and second stages of the SM-6. Aerojet currently supplies both rocket motors for the missile.
Anduril said it has several active SRM contracts with DoD customers.
Anduril, Ursa Major, and X-Bow all tout bringing new and advanced manufacturing techniques and capabilities that they say will boost SRM production and lower costs.
“Our advanced manufacturing process for solid rocket motors is already faster and more efficient than existing techniques used across the industry,” Neil Thurgood, Anduril’s senior vice president and a retired Army general, said in a statement.
Anduril entered the rocket motor business last June when it acquired Adranos Inc., and said then it would be “supercharging” the efforts of its new business unit (Defense Daily, June 26, 2023). A key component of that deal was ALITEC, a proprietary rocket fuel that Anduril says “releases more energy per unit, extending the range, payload capacity and speed of missile systems by up to 40 percent.”
In addition to investing $75 million of its funds, Anduril said the expansion of the facilities in McHenry will benefit from a tax incentive provided by the Mississippi Development Authority, and assistance from Stone County and AccelerateMS, which works to meet the state’s workforce needs.
Anduril this year hopes to hire more than 60 new employees in Stone County to include software and hardware engineers, machinists, chemists, manufacturing technicians, production managers, and supply chain specialists.
L3Harris’ Aerojet business is also expanding and modernizing its SRM facilities and manufacturing capabilities through a $215.6 million contract the DoD awarded the company in April 2023 to help boost production (Defense Daily, May 13). And, in late 2023, Northrop Grumman conducted a hot fire test of a new SRM it designed and developed in less than a year with its own funds to accelerate the pace of innovation and add production capacity (Defense Daily, Dec. 8, 2023).