Top U.S. defense company Lockheed Martin said this week it’s pouring $420 million into a facility in Camden, Arkansas, just 13 days after defense firm L3Harris announced the opening of its own 60,000-square-foot facility next door.
The twin announcements underscore how American manufacturers are racing to meet global demand for rocket motors and highly complex missiles — and making huge investments in U.S. production capacity to do so.
After a year of development and the increased pressure of the war in Iran, missile suppliers for some of the Pentagon’s most in-demand weapons have quickly invested in larger and more efficient production lines.
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Lockheed Martin, a Maryland-based firm with operations across the country, is investing heavily in Camden. The company says it will add 650 new full-time jobs to the area over the next five years. Established in 1979, Lockheed’s 2.2-million-square-foot Camden facility has produced 700,000 missiles and rockets over the past four decades. In a recent press release, the company acknowledged the challenge of “unprecedented” demands right now for missiles.
“Lockheed Martin is investing at unprecedented speed and scale to expand manufacturing capacity and deliver the critical capabilities our warfighters need, faster,” said Adam Bailey, Camden site general manager at Lockheed Martin. “For more than four decades, Camden has played a vital role in strengthening our nation’s defense, and this investment marks another significant step in accelerating production, advancing next-generation manufacturing and creating 650 new jobs.”
Major defense industry players have been freed up by legal pathways in the Defense Production Act — a Cold War-era law that President Trump invoked in June — to produce missiles faster through collaboration with other companies. Without the Defense Production Act, such collaboration would have triggered federal antitrust violations.
The expansion of Camden facilities is a clear signal that missile production lines in the U.S. are increasing capacity to meet President Trump’s demands. The administration has pushed defense firms to ramp production in the months since a June 11 presidential memo invoking the Defense Production Act.
Weeks later, on June 24, Mr. Trump met with the CEOs of defense firms Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Honeywell and made the case for increased production. Even before that, as the war in Iran began draining key military resources, the White House met with missile producers L3Harris, Lockheed Martin and RTX, the parent company of missile manufacturer Raytheon.
Companies are embracing the new strategy, especially those producing assets for Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense systems. Stockpiles of those systems have dwindled as the U.S., its Mideast partners and ally Ukraine use them to fend off modern drone-and-missile assaults from adversaries such as Iran and Russia.
Behind the scenes, firms are sharing best practices and even investment strategies without violating antitrust laws.
The investment by Lockheed Martin in the Camden facility will increase production capacity for multiple munitions, specifically those identified by the Munitions Acceleration Council, a group within the Pentagon created to coordinate domestic arms production.
The PAC-3, a version of the Patriot air defense missile, along with THAAD and Precision Strike Missile platforms, are all on the Munitions Acceleration Council’s list of critical weapon systems. They will each have increased production out of Lockheed Martin’s Camden facility, the company said.
A global hub
International partners, such as Israel, also view Camden as a vital production hub.
“From a global perspective, one thing that we’ve learned and we’re looking to expand is what we call ‘joint resilience,’” Col. Yishai Kohn, the chief integration officer at the Israeli Ministry of Defense’s directorate of defense research and development, told The Washington Times’ Threat Status Podcast in an exclusive interview set to air later this month.
He described having supply chains that are shared among friendly countries.
“Just an example, Iron Dome nowadays is produced not only in Israel but also in Camden, Arkansas,” he said, referring to Israel’s famed missile defense system.
“We’re looking to see that we have joint development, joint procurement, joint production, even joint stockpiles,” Col. Kohn said.
A joint venture between Raytheon and Israeli defense firm Rafael produced the first U.S.-made Israeli Tamir interceptor missiles in Camden last month.
Florida-based L3Harris is capitalizing on the increased demand both domestically and globally. The company began constructing multiple new facilities in Camden less than a year ago with a planned $400 million investment. The L3Harris Camden facility produces more than 115,000 solid rocket motors, or SRMs, each year.
But the Department of Defense is asking for more. L3Harris says it is investing to meet that demand under new seven-year-long contracts.
“The opening of this state-of-the-art facility marks a major step forward in strengthening the solid rocket motor industrial base our nation and its allies urgently need,” Ken Bedingfield, the president of L3Harris’ missile solutions division, told audiences at the L3Harris ribbon-cutting ceremony in Camden last month.
“This facility showcases the power of government-industry collaboration as well as the expansion model we’re implementing nationwide,” he said.
The new investments represent a shift in the defense industry. The Trump administration has pressured companies to invest their own capital in production capacity.
Lockheed Martin and L3Harris had already started to invest in increased missile and SRM production late last year. The conflict in Iran meant those investments needed to show immediate results.
“Rocket propulsion is a vital national security capability,” Michael Duffey, the under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said during the Arkansas ribbon-cutting ceremony. “This state-of-the-art facility enhances L3Harris’ capabilities and represents a critical leap forward in solid rocket motor production capacity, ensuring the joint forces and our allies maintain a resilient, responsive, and secure supply chain for precision munitions to support our warfighters.”
Whether these new investments and facilities will be able to ramp up production fast enough to meet the growing demand remains to be seen. Lower-level producers of the chemicals involved in the production of SRMs are still limited to a single supplier. Difficult and extensive processes for ensuring a new supplier’s facilities are qualified to make what are known as energetics, the raw explosive chemicals used in the production of SRMs, slow down the entire production line.
L3Harris says it hopes that its investments in roughly 60 new facilities across the country and investments in those lower-level suppliers will “help the company double, triple and quadruple propulsion production rates for a range of key programs.”
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