Rocket developer and manufacturer X-Bow Systems on Tuesday said it has acquired Spencer Composites in a deal that brings in-house the company’s supplier of motor cases for hypersonic rockets.
Terms of the acquisition, the first for X-Bow, were not disclosed. Founded in 1994, Spencer Composites is based in Sacramento, Calif., and has 26 employees, all of whom will be joining X-Bow along. Brian Spencer, who was president and CEO of Spencer Composites, joins X-Bow as operations technical principal and industry subject matter expert.
Spencer Composites, a 30-year old family run business, has capabilities in composite and metal structures for the aerospace, defense, and oil and gas industries. For several years the small company has been supplying composite motor cases to X-Bow in the 30-inch-plus class for launch vehicles and hypersonic rocket motors, Jason Hundley, founder and CEO of X-Bow, told Defense Daily.
In addition to becoming more vertically integrated, Hundley said the acquisition offers his company other strategic benefits. One is that X-Bow will help Spencer Composites scale production rather than having to do so on its own.
“Now as part of X-Bow, they can scale much more efficiently for some of these qualification production programs we’ve been winning,” he said.
Those programs include the Large Solid Rocket Motor that X-Bow is developing to become a second supplier for the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike Weapon System and the Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapons System (Defense Daily, May 7). Both weapons are in development by Lockheed Martin [LMT], which has invested in X-Bow. Northrop Grumman [NOC] supplies the solid rocket motors (SRMs) under subcontracts to Lockheed Martin.
X-Bow also sees opportunities for Spencer Composites to play in the company’s smaller diameter SRM efforts. X-Bow is doing composite versus metal motor case trade studies on the smaller SRM programs, Hundley said, noting that Spencer Composites also makes metallic structures.
“So, it allows us to make those trades much more efficiently and also, you know, add more affordability and value for customers because now they’re integrated as part of our X-Bow team from the start,” he said.
X-Bow and other startups recently received contracts from the Navy to develop second-stage SRMs for the Navy’s Standard Missile, which is 21-inches in diameter (Defense Daily, April 30). It also received an award for the first-stage motor.
X-Bow already manufactures the energetics that go into the motor cases and Hundley said the combination of the two companies gives them options to explore for enhancing overall SRM production.
“We control everything from the molecule up on the energetics with our advanced manufacturing system [and] now we are integrating our case suppliers. That allows us pretty some interesting knobs when we look at advanced or much more affordable solid rocket motor manufacturing when we combine those elements.”
In addition to its employee base, Spencer Composites provides X-Bow with key patents, over 50,000 square feet of manufacturing and prototyping space, composite processes, CNC machining, and other manufacturing tools.