Global demand, depleted U.S. stockpiles have American firms cranking up rocket, missile production

Global demand for arms in an increasingly fractious world and an alarmingly depleted U.S. stockpile of long-range weapons are driving a dramatic surge in the American defense industry’s production of rockets and missiles.

Key manufacturers are pushing millions of dollars into new and revamped production lines to speed the resupply of the U.S. arsenal after transfers to Israel, Ukraine and other global hot spots.

The Pentagon and Congress are encouraging companies to deliver finished products as soon as possible, even if that means building without final, signed government contracts.

The output capacity of the rocket supply chain in 2026 is on track to be nearly six times the current production for large solid rocket motors and at least triple that for smaller tactical solid rocket motors.

Manufacturers such as L3Harris, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics are investing a combined total of more than $700 million in solid rocket motors.

“There have been a number of munitions utilized and therefore are needing to be replaced either for our allies or for our country as well,” said Ken Bedingfield, chief financial officer for L3Harris Technologies, one of the defense companies making sizable investments at the center of the solid rocket motor production race.

“There is a demand signal that’s going to be enduring for some time to ensure that our country and our allies have sufficient stockpiles in order to project power and to help keep peace around the globe,” Mr. Bedingfield said in an exclusive interview during a recent visit by a Washington Times reporter to a newly opened L3Harris advanced munitions plant in Arkansas.

Long-range targeting, especially in the age of autonomous drone warfare, has become critical on the battlefield. Thousands of rockets have been used in Ukraine to attack Russian forces and to intercept missiles, glide bombs and drones.

The U.S. inventory, which has been tapped to support Ukraine’s war effort, also has been used in recent years to protect American service members and civilian craft in the Red Sea.

The result has been a backlog of orders that, coupled with the sudden need to restock the Israeli arsenal, has drastically increased demand for the replenishment of U.S. stocks.

The situation has “pushed munitions production to the top of the priority list in the Department of Defense,” said Wes Rumbaugh, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who focuses on missile defense.

Mr. Rumbaugh said the prevalence of conflicts has “jump-started a lot of demand.”

Studies conducted by Congress, CSIS, students at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and several defense companies point to what one industry source told The Times: “The U.S. doesn’t have enough arrows in its quiver.”

The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the U.S. defense industrial base has awakened to the reality that production was sorely lacking because the country has been “riding the peace dividend of the past 30 years.”

Traditionally, U.S. demand for missiles and solid rocket motors is cyclical. The demand signal grows as conflicts arise and inventory is expended.

In peacetime, the signal drops and arsenal inventory is stored in munitions bunkers and launch sites.

“You’ll be in a conflict, you’ll chew through munitions, there’s a big demand,” Mr. Rumbaugh said. “But anytime there’s lean defense times, like the defense budget flattens out, or there are just other priorities, these munitions can hit various troughs. It all flows downhill from there.”

The NASA Space Shuttle program, which relied on solid rocket fuel, kept the industry afloat. The program used two large, reusable solid-fuel rockets, and its shutdown in 2011 had a detrimental effect.

Solid rocket propellant has had few commercial uses since the Space Shuttle program was discontinued, and many propellant manufacturers have atrophied. That contributed to a deep and extensive supply chain problem.

However, investment is growing.

This summer, American Pacific Corp., a critical supplier of materials for propellant, invested $100 million in its Cedar City, Utah, facility. The company said the investment will increase capacity at the site by 50%.

In August, Anduril invested $75 million in a new operational solid rocket motor manufacturing facility in McHenry, Mississippi. Anduril intends to expand the facility to an annual production capacity of 6,000 tactical-level solid rocket motors by the end of 2026.

L3Harris, meanwhile, has invested more than $500 million across its facilities. The majority is going toward the ongoing construction of an advanced process and technology facility in Camden, Arkansas.

“There is a demand signal that’s going to be enduring for quite some time,” said Mr. Bedingfield, who has worked at L3Harris across its acquisition of the Camden facility. “We do see that there’s going to be a steady production for some time to come.”

Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and L3Harris are participating in the heavy production line investment.

L3Harris supplies missile arsenals to three military services and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

The company said it is backfilling solid rocket motor inventory to replenish the more than 400 rounds of intercept missiles used in Israel over the past two years.

“We’re trying to focus on [building] an ecosystem that says, ‘We’ll keep the supplier hot, based on the demand that we know, we’ll take some risk, we’ll lean forward,’” Mr. Bedingfield said.

Those risks are no longer calculated solely by the Defense Department or driven by contract demands alone. In an attempt to stabilize the market and capitalize on a less-restrictive international sales environment, major manufacturers are conducting more in-house analysis of global conflicts, monitoring and predicting the expenditure of the ammunition they produce.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s shift toward more connected products and the use of artificial intelligence for predictive modeling in supply and logistics is advancing the demand timeline.

The ebb and flow will be a challenge to the procurement structure that the Pentagon is pushing.

L3Harris generates the majority of its revenue through a traditional contract method.

The remainder, slightly more than 20%, is starting to follow the process that the Pentagon and now Congress are interested in seeing: delivery of a finished product based on defense needs rather than waiting for a contract.

“The question is, will the Department of Defense be able to send a long-term demand signal and marshal the resources to keep all those businesses afloat?” Mr. Rumbaugh said.

Suppliers also will feel that burden.

“The problem is when you get to those lower levels, the production base atrophies a little bit. Then you start using them, and you need to ramp that up really, really quickly to replace all the munitions that you just fired,” Mr. Rumbaugh said.

Reports on key systems used in Ukraine and Israel and those staged for the defense of Taiwan reveal back orders and critical shortages.

The widely used U.S. Patriot missile defense system and Javelin missile systems, as well as Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, have been impacted.

“You’ve seen a lot of energy and momentum behind industrial base concerns, both at the end of the last Biden administration and now with this new one,” Mr. Rumbaugh said. “It’s certainly been a focus area of this administration and this Department of Defense, but you’re going to have to pay for resiliency.”

L3Harris is taking a more aggressive business stance, said Mr. Bedingfield and others, adopting a “commercial model” that invests in its own facilities and manufacturing and in those of its suppliers.

“We’re trying to lean forward a bit to have an ecosystem that produces this product faster,” said Mr. Bedingfield, who is in charge of many of those risk calculations for L3Harris.

The U.S. has half the number of solid rocket motor producers it had at the height of the Cold War. L3Harris, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics have invested heavily in the suppliers below them.

L3Harris produces the “primary cell” motor for most of the tactical weapons, missile defense systems, strategic deterrence and even hypersonic missiles used by the U.S.

Companies across the defense industry are trying to add resilience to their supply chains at the tail end of the production process. That includes partnering with commercial companies that can supply more of the raw materials and pushing them through the qualification program helmed by the Defense Logistics Agency, a longer and slower process. Many companies drop out as demand falters.

“We know that these products are going to be needed by the U.S. government or our allies,” Mr. Bedingfield said. “But we want to make sure we build the right ones at the right times so that we get them in their hands.”