Anduril Industries has been awarded $14.3 million by the Department of Defense under Title III of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to expand the solid rocket motor (SRM) industrial base. Anduril is a fast-growing non-traditional merchant supplier of SRMs.
Strained munitions production underscored by recent global conflicts has led Congress and the Department of Defense to prioritize strengthening the SRM industrial base. The government investment will be added to the company’s $75 million investment to produce large volumes of SRMs at reduced costs.
Most Read on Design & Development Today:
At its facility in McHenry, Mississippi, Anduril is using the investment to develop and qualify SRMs that demonstrate its innovative manufacturing technologies, like bladeless speed-mixing, single-piece flow, and advanced manufacturing technologies. The funding will also bolster Anduril’s existing work to design, build, and test second-stage rocket motors for programs of record and other large-scale weapons, including the U.S. Navy’s Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) program.
The combination of private and public resources reflects a shared commitment to addressing America’s urgent need for scalable, high-performance rocket motor production, and it establishes Anduril as a new entrant best positioned to deliver full-rate SRM production capacity on a rapid timeline.
According to the company, the traditional SRM industry has struggled under the weight of outdated, manual, and analog processes. The resulting bottlenecks, cost overruns, and delays have hindered the development and deployment of a range of weapons systems upon which U.S. conventional deterrence relies.
Click here to subscribe to our daily newsletter featuring breaking engineering industry news.