L3Harris Technologies plans $1.3B solid rocket motor expansion in Virginia

Dive Brief:

Defense contractor L3Harris Technologies is spending $1.3 billion to increase its solid rocket motor manufacturing capacity at its operations in Orange County, Virginia, Gov. Abigail Spanberger announced Wednesday.
The company’s plans include establishing an advanced propulsion campus, which will provide mixing, grinding, casting and final assembly support for SRM production under multiple Department of Defense programs, according to L3Harris’ press release.
L3Harris’ announcement builds on the SRM manufacturer’s $41.2 million expansion plans from April 2024. The company broke ground on five SRM facilities that will be robotically enabled and include a casting and assembly center.

Dive Insight:

The $41.2 million project will support Javelin propulsion and is expected to be completed this year, a spokesperson for L3Harris said in an email Thursday.

The billion-dollar Virginia APF campus project will create more than 350 jobs over the next five years, according to the press release.

While a construction timeline was not disclosed, the company is working with designers and construction companies to move “with a sense of urgency to get these facilities vertical and new production lines humming — and ultimately — to get these propulsion systems into the field as quickly as possible,” the spokesperson said.

The site will include “dozens of new facilities totaling hundreds of thousands of square feet to meet long-term production needs,” they said.

The Virginia APF campus will use designs from recent expansion projects, including from one of its “Factories of the Future” in Arkansas. In July 2025, L3Harris announced it was investing “nearly half a billion dollars” to further expand its solid rocket motor manufacturing campus in Camden, Arkansas, which will be operated by subsidiary Aerojet Rocketdyne. The blueprint includes constructing and activating over 20 buildings and the company broke ground on the Arkansas campus in November 2025.

With the $1 billion-plus expansion, the Orange County operations are set to more than double the SRM manufacturing space, according to the company’s press release.

The advanced propulsion facilities will be under L3Harris’ new missile solutions business, which the company launched in January as part of an agreement with DOD. L3Harris aims to seek an initial public offering for the new business in the second half of 2026. DOD pledged to back the new entity with $1 billion, which would be converted into stock once the missile solutions enterprise goes public.

“The reason we wanted the $1 billion as an anchor investor is to give us confidence that we can invest today,” Chairman and CEO Christopher Kubasik said in his remarks during at L3Harris’ investor day event on Feb. 23.

Kubasik and Missile Solutions President Kenneth Bedingfield provided more details about the upcoming business at L3Harris’ investor day event on Feb. 23. The missile solutions business guidance anticipates generating $4.4 billion in revenue, nearly a 16% increase from 2025, Bedingfield said.

With DOD requesting more weapons, Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2026, which authorizes the agency to enter into multiyear contracts for weapons systems.

“Missiles, we don’t have enough, they need more,” Kubasik said in his remarks. “We have the scale, and we’re scaling even larger to make more. This isn’t time for experiments. This isn't time for demos. We need to crank out the serious amount of solid rocket motors and the OEMs that we work for need to deliver a ton of missiles, and this is the way to do it.”

Virginia has been drawing defense contractors to the state over the past few months. Specialty chemical maker Solstice Advanced Materials announced plans in January to spend over $220 million to expand production at its ballistic fiber manufacturing facility in Colonial Heights, Virginia.

Italy-based Avio announced in December 2025 that it had selected Virginia to establish an $537.6 million manufacturing facility that will produce solid rocket motors for defense, tactical propulsion, missile systems and the commercial space sectors.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed legislation earlier this month establishing the Solid Rocket Motor Manufacturing Grant Fund that will provide Avio grant installments of up to $6 million per fiscal year from July 1, 2027, to July 1, 2046.