Northrop aims to double GMLRS rocket-motor output

Northrop Grumman is preparing to pump out 14,000 rocket motors per year, roughly doubling production as the Pentagon works to replace weapons sent to Ukraine and rebuild stockpiles against future wars. 

Over the last four years, the defense giant delivered 5,000 to 6,000 solid rocket motors per year to power Lockheed Martin’s Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System. But in the last year or two, demand is pushing Northrop to get to 10,000, potentially 14,000, motors per year, said Gordon LoPresti, senior director of propulsion systems and controls at Northrop. 

“There's more work to be done to get to 14,000, but we've had excess capacity versus the 6,000 that we've been delivering, so we're already starting to be able to move up that curve and have a great partnership with both the U.S. government, our partners, and our primes, to be able to allow us to do that,” LoPresti said on the sidelines of the AUSA conference. 

Northrop builds solid rocket motors at facilities in West Virginia and Maryland, which concentrate on medium, tactical-sized solid rocket motors, and in Utah, which focuses on larger motors, like for the future Sentinel ICBM. Over the last six years, Northrop has spent a billion dollars to boost production capability at the three sites. 

“With that six-year investment, we've been able to triple the capacity at the combination of the West Virginia and Maryland sites, so primarily for the tactical rocket motors, and we're on track, within the next couple of years, to be doubling the capacity at our Utah sites for the much larger items that we build,” LoPresti said. 

Beyond Northrop’s infrastructure, execs say they’re investing in the entire supply chain to ensure smaller suppliers can keep up as the company increases its production cadence. Industry executives have previously pointed to gaps in sub-tier suppliers’ ability to provide critical components, like cases, nozzles, and igniters. 

Northrop has made “strategic agreements” with its suppliers so they’re ready to supply those components in the volume needed, LoPresti said. “We have to have a very good understanding and a consistent understanding with the U.S. government and our primes on what that demand is going to be years into the future. We take that a step further, and have spent an enormous amount of time with our suppliers and those strategic agreements to implement some of those demand signals into those agreements so that they feel more comfortable going out and going to their supply chains and executing on activities that are going to prepare them to be able to support us when we need them.” 

Northrop and Aerojet Rocketdyne, which was bought by L3Harris last year, have been operating as the only two suppliers of SRMs in the U.S. But now that the Pentagon has asked for more production capacity—and main supplier Aerojet has struggled to deliver rocket motors to customers on time—new companies like Ursa Major, X-Bow Systems, and Anduril are coming onto the scene. 

“With some of the challenges that I think the government and the primes are seeing with some of those suppliers, it is completely understandable that there's a desire for diversification of the solid rocket motor suppliers in the market. Couple that with the increasing demand for solid rocket motors, it even puts more urgency on increasing the supply base, or the diversification of the supply base,” LoPresti said. 

Asked whether demand will sustain Northrop, Aerojet, and a slew of new entrants, LoPresti said there needs to be more diversification in the market.

"It’s hard to imagine a scenario where all of them can be successful. You have some start-ups or…new market entrants and you would expect that some of them will be successful and they will gain traction and remain in the market as a solid rocket motor supplier and some of them will move on to bigger and better things," he said.