Aerojet Rocketdyne supplies one of the most critical parts of a munition — solid rocket motors — and since L3Harris acquired the company roughly two years ago its goal has been to ramp up production to meet the skyrocketing demand for tactical and strategic missiles.
As part of that quest, Aerojet broke ground earlier this year to build four new solid rocket motor production facilities at its campus in Camden, Arkansas.
Defense News sat down earlier this month with the dual-hatted Ken Bedingfield, who is both L3Harris’ chief financial officer and Aerojet Rocketdyne’s president, to discuss the rapidly expanding solid rocket motor industry and how the company is looking to innovate by changing the way it manufactures and partners to deliver capability.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
With the demand of solid rocket motors being as high as they are, where do you think the company will go in terms of building capacity in the next five years?
It’s been almost two years since we acquired Aerojet Rocketdyne, and there was a set of delinquent deliveries that existed at the time of the acquisition. We have done a lot of work to burn that down. And we burned that down probably to the tune of about 60% of what was late or delinquent at the time of acquisition.
Which programs were most behind?
It was certainly multiple, but we’ve done a great job of really driving that down and we continue to be focused on that. And increasing our capacity to make deliveries for tactical motors; whether that’s Stinger, Javelin, GMLRS [Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System missiles].
We’ve about doubled our investment in [capital expenditures] to be able to increase capacity in existing facilities in Camden and then we are investing, along with the U.S. government around the Defense Procurement Act funding that we received to put a new facility online … largely for Stinger, Javelin and GMLRS, specifically to that new facility.
We will continue to focus a significant amount of our effort on tactical motors for the next three to five years in driving that capacity up. We certainly always continue to invest in R&D [research and development], and so if there are needs for focus on a different motor, if you talk about multiple launches, that would likely be a smaller motor, we could certainly, pretty quickly, surge where we have capacity to address things like that.
We’re certainly focused on affordability, and how we can deliver as much capability for the lowest cost possible. I think we’re trying to get to that through, certainly the capital side of things, repeatability, robotics, automation, and then from a design perspective: What are the materials in the propellants? How do you burn the propellants? How do you get range out of the amount of mass that you have?
It’s a pretty diverse portfolio. And there’s a lot of programs and products in there, so there will likely always be some level of delinquencies as you focus your resources on what’s critical at the moment. But I think we would largely, will get to more of a steady state, probably end of 2025, where we’re really able to focus on driving the capacity improvements and really seeing some of the results of the investments that we’ve been making in capacity, and, again, continuing to burn down those delinquencies, while also addressing the amount of demand that we see from customers.
Expand on the adoption of robotics and automation you’re putting into your facilities, and what does that mean for different workers involved in production?
We are hiring in Camden and Huntsville. We still need people, just what they are doing will be different. And I would say, as we move forward, there is more science, maybe, and less art to how you produce a motor, and so that’s some of the automation, whether it’s robotic application of materials to the inside of a motor, whether it’s robotic application of materials on the outside. How do you actually do the pouring and casting of the propellant itself? So we are automating those types of processes to make sure that you get the right quality because the tolerances here are pretty tight, pretty specific in how you do this and so it reduces the risk of needing rework and things like that.
What would labor then be focusing on in terms of other parts of the production process?
It might be quality, certainly. Predictive data is another one. I think that there’s opportunity to have labor doing some aspects of that, but mostly it’s where there’s repeatable and high-volume process. It’s pulling the labor out of there and moving it into kind of less repeatable, lower volume areas, potentially moving from production to R&D, as an example.
How much more quickly can you produce solid rocket motors for your major programs?
We can absolutely accelerate the rate at which we produce solid rocket motors. … Some of it comes down to how quickly can we get on contract. And it takes, unfortunately, longer than you would like, or longer than you would expect, to get on contract to deliver some of these motors. And then, working with the supply chain, there’s some long lead items in there that mean that we can’t deliver until we get some of those parts.
We have to be able to turn our suppliers on. And there’s a limited number of suppliers that are doing cases and nozzles and some of these other components of the product. So we’ve been making some investments in the supply base and the suppliers, providing them with some capital, with some equipment, things like that, and trying to, therefore, shorten that time. … We work with our customers to get funding for some of the long lead requirements, to keep those lines hot so that as capacity is needed, we can move there as quickly as possible.
How are you driving flexibility into your manufacturing process to deal with any future ebb and flow in demand? Obviously demand is high now, but we can’t predict the future.
As we look at some of the investments we’re making, we’re trying to think about how those are more, I hate to use the word, flexible, but, I’ll just say able to be used across multiple products and programs, so less program centric, and more maybe one week you’re doing work for Javelin or another kind of smaller motor and the next week you’re able to be mixing and casting for a different motor.
That’s one of the things that we’ve asked the team to really think about. It is tough because if you look at a solid rocket motor facility, because you’re dealing with explosives, it’s got to be dispersed. And because it’s dispersed, you tend to disperse it by product or by program. So you’ll drive around a facility, you’ll say, ‘There’s a [Patriot Advanced Capability]-3 building. There’s a SRM building, Standard Missile 2, Standard Missile 2 1B, or Standard Missile 3,’ … and now we’re trying to say, ‘There’s a mix and cast building,’ and then you get that to where it needs to be, then integrate in the next product
We’re calling it kind of the factory of the future for solid rocket motors to rethink how do we do it. And I think it’s a good time for it, because, as I mentioned, we’ve doubled our [capital expenditures] in two years since we acquired the business, and as we work with the U.S. government to integrate the DPA, along with our capital, it really gives us an opportunity to while we very much focus on meeting the letter of the law of what the DPA was for — and that was three specific programs — making sure that we are really thinking about how we are able to surge as demand changes over time.
Are you seeing opportunities to partner with nontraditional companies or ones just coming on line working on various aspects of this industry?
We are. We consider ourselves to be the trusted disruptor in the defense industry. We think we are a little more agile than some of the traditional primes, and therefore, we think we’re a good partner to be able to move fast and work with some of the new entrants, and that’s where we think some of the discussions will ultimately lead.
How is L3Harris approaching President Trump’s executive order to establish a missile defense shield of the homeland he is calling Golden Dome? Have you responded to the Missile Defense Agency’s requests for information?
I think there were eight RFIs [requests for information] that came out from MDA, and then another agency had a set of RFIs that they asked for responses on. We’ve responded to all of those. We are excited about Golden Dome. We think it’s an important capability to keeping the homeland safe and we think we’ve got a lot of technology and capability there, whether it’s space-based missile warning, missile tracking and capabilities around interceptors. You may have seen we, as Aerojet Rocketdyne, have been successful in finding positions on various interceptor programs, whether that’s propulsion or divert and attitude control.
We do a lot of ballistic missile targets. … And you may have seen recently, I think they called it FT-X 40, was a test that was run, and we had largely provided the capability for that. It was the first ballistic missile test to use a new motor that we had developed. And it also tested some, let’s just say, hypersonic capability that L3 Harris has some interest in or some capability around.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.
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