Arthur McMiler
The American Center for Manufacturing & Innovation and Prometheus Energetics have entered into an agreement to build a facility for solid rocket motors and munitions at the latter’s 550-hectare campus in Bloomfield, Indiana. The facility will help startups enter SRM manufacturing while supporting companies already established in the segment, ACMI said Friday. The facility’s construction is expected to start in the second half of 2025.
$75M DOD Funding
The center is pursuing the SRM segment’s development through its ACMI Federal affiliate, which secured a $75 million Department of Defense contract in September 2023 to establish an advanced munitions campus for harmonizing DOD collaboration with private manufacturers specialized hypersonic systems and critical chemicals. The campus program’s goals include rapid testing, refinement and collaboration on technologies through shared resources for production at scale.
Victor Boelscher, federal programs head at ACMI Federal, conveyed excitement in Prometheus’ entering into the munitions campus program. “This is a critical step in establishing a domestic nexus for national security supply chains and lowering barriers to entry for new manufacturers into the defense industrial base, while creating jobs right here at home,” the company official said.
Partnerships Supporting the SRM Sector
Prometheus is a $175 million joint venture that Kratos Defense & Security Solutions and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems formed for the production and distribution of solid rocket motors and other energetics for the defense sector. The JV’s site is near the U.S. Navy’s Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division and the U.S. Army’s Crane Army Ammunition Activity in Crane, Indiana.
ACMI Federal, along with the National Armaments Consortium, partnered with the Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head Division in January 2024 to drive U.S. production of critical chemicals and energetic materials through a collaborative research and development agreement. Through the agreement, the team will develop innovative small-scale pilot processing methods and solid propulsion technologies for the U.S. Navy and DOD.
