Breaking Into The SRM Supply Chain

Chemicals aren’t the only risk area for SRMs, industry executives said, with Govini noting that certain nozzles require seven to 10 months of lead time to source. And given the already constrained nature of the supply base, startups and new entrants into the SRM space are taking unusual steps to ensure that they will have the components they need for motor production. “With the significant increase in demand for SRMs, it’s clear that already there are some single point bottlenecks, and that if all of these existing suppliers and the new suppliers go to the same sub tiers, you’re going to run into more bottlenecks and constraints,” said Bret Perry, Anduril’s head of growth for rocket motor systems. For ignition safety devices, supply chain risks can be mitigated by managing schedules and planning for the lead times necessary, said Perry. For other components, like nozzles, insulation and motor cases, Anduril sees value in either adding new suppliers to the industrial base or convincing existing suppliers to expand horizontally into manufacturing other needed components, he said. For example, Perry noted that Anduril engineers taught one of its nozzle suppliers how to make motor cases after noticing that the company had the machinery onsite needed to wind composite materials into larger structures. “We were able to demonstrate that. We’ve fired motors with that case,” Perry said. “For some of the newer suppliers that are new to this, completely all together, those are items that are still in motion. … Those are longer term putts.”

Ursa Major, which will begin qualifying SRMs in 2026, is taking a slightly different approach. Instead of pinning its hopes solely on expanding the existing SRM supply chain, the Colorado-based startup is banking on vertical integration, said Bill Murray, its vice president of product and engineering for its solid missile systems business. “We’re actually buying powder and sintering it ourselves, and in Youngstown, Ohio, that becomes part of the metallic parts of the motor,” Murray said. “We’re really pushing hard on getting composite motors fielded across many different munitions, mostly because the steel motor case supply chain is so fundamentally difficult to solve.” At the same time, Murray added that there remain challenges like igniters, and while “there’s no one panacea to that,” Ursa’s current strategy is to manufacture and integrate its own ignition systems for most of its SRMs. Meanwhile, to address barriers with single-source chemical suppliers, Ursa intends to use fewer propellant ingredients across its family of SRMs, as well as seeking out new suppliers. “There are a good number of startups in the synthetic chemical industry that are entering the solid rocket motor market, the supply market, and we’re working with many of them that are coming up with new ways of synthesizing chemicals that are more resilient and more automated,” he said.

Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, which are working together to stand up GD as a maker of rocket motors for Lockheed’s GMLRS munition, see supply constraints in nozzles and insulators as a potential roadblock, said Jerry Brode, vice president of Lockheed’s solid rocket motor product center. To mitigate those concerns, Lockheed plans to stand up a production capability for nozzles, with those items able to support GMLRS production and potentially other munitions in the future, Brode told reporters in October. Current SRM primes are also making their own investments into the supply chain. L3Harris has put more than $250 million into long lead material advanced funding and advanced funding to cover obsolescence of raw materials to suppliers. It has also directly invested more than $30 million to help its supply base modernize and expand its workforce, said Scott Alexander, its president of missile solutions. The company is seeing some signs of recovery as a result. For example, after L3Harris made an investment in tooling for one of its suppliers of motor cases, that company increased its monthly output by 1,000 percent, while investments in tooling and fixtures to a supplier that makes insulated nozzles contributed to a 350 percent increase in capacity. “There’s no secret that there are some single sources and potentially some dual sources, and we’re continuing to look at that,” Alexander said. “But if you ask me, ‘What is the health of the supply base?’ It is improving along these lines.”

Meanwhile Northrop Grumman has invested “more than $1 billion” across its SRM facilities and plans to double its rocket motor output over the next four years, it said in a statement to Breaking Defense. The statement did not specify how much of that investment has gone toward its supply chain. “We directly support efforts to diversify the supply chain and to address supply chain resiliency, particularly for suppliers that feed into our supply chain or common source of supply with other companies,” the company stated. “Northrop Grumman also supports the U.S. Government’s initiatives to address supply chain resiliency more broadly, including working with our allies and partners to invest in expanding capabilities in their countries.” Despite the work being done to expand the supply chain, it’s possible that not all SRM makers vying to enter the market are going to make it. “I think the supply base is there for three to four, large suppliers,” Perry said. “If everyone today was to fully scale, that’s where you’d run into potential challenges. But not everyone is going to fully scale.”

‘You Have to Be Able to Produce It’

Both Congress and the Defense Department have been bullish on financial efforts meant to help solidify and diversify the SRM supply chain, but the exact extent of the Pentagon’s aid to industry — as well as its success in standing up new second- and third-tier suppliers — is still opaque. The reconciliation bill approved by lawmakers in 2025 included $200 million for the solid rocket motor industrial base, another $400 million specifically for emerging SRM makers and their supply chain, $42 million for second sources of large diameter solid rocket motors for hypersonic missiles and $100 million for development of a second solid rocket motor source for Navy air defense and anti-ship missiles. The Defense Department did not respond to detailed questions about its investments in the solid rocket motor supply chain, including how it plans on spending reconciliation dollars. However, some details of its previous investments have been announced in contract awards. Before the end of fiscal 2025, the Defense Department announced $73 million in contracts meant to help expand the SRM supply base, awarding money to five vendors. The projects included $25 million for prototype production of 3D-printed motor cases and more than $12 million to test whether rayon fabric could be converted into a material used for insulating rocket nozzles. In late December, the Pentagon announced almost another $33 million in SRM-related awards, with money to increase production of cases and nozzles. (All of the awards tapped funding from the Defense Production Act, which lapsed on Oct. 1 but was reauthorized by Congress in December through the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.)

The department has also made investments in the new SRM makers themselves, providing $14 million to Anduril in January for improvements at its production facility in Mississippi and $14 billion for X-Bow Systems in 2025 to prototype and test a GMLRS rocket motor, among other awards. But for Sarnicki of Helicon Chemical, which is still waiting for the funding it needs to start ramping production, the Defense Department’s stated intent of moving faster and correcting vulnerabilities in the SRM supply base hasn’t matched the reality faced by small vendors like his own company. “We’re a small company way down the food chain, and we’re just trying to pay our bills and keep the thing moving forward,” Sarnicki said. “Way up on top, things may be going better. You’ll read the articles that Raytheon gets a huge contract [for weapons], or Northrop gets it. Everything seems great. But you have to be able to produce it.”