As demand for munitions surges amid heightened global tensions, the Navy has launched a multibillion-dollar plan to fill critical industrial base gaps by revitalizing the government-run production of solid-rocket motors and other key energetics at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head Division.
Located less than an hour’s drive from Washington, the Maryland facility is in the early stages of a new Energetics Comprehensive Modernization plan (ECMP) -- an initiative that will put roughly $2 billion into 500 infrastructure projects over the next decade.
According to Ashley Johnson, the center’s technical director, this investment is necessary to get Indian Head back in shape after two decades of inattention, during which the Pentagon was focused on counterterrorism rather than sustaining a munitions industrial base capable of supporting competition with peer or near-peer adversaries.
“ECMP looked at that systematically and said, these are the 500 projects that have to happen in order for us to regain our competencies and reestablish not only the brick and mortar but also the intellectual capital,” Johnson told Inside Defense during an exclusive interview at the facility.
The near-term goal of ECMP is completing a series of long-neglected maintenance jobs -- repairing roads, replacing pipes and upgrading electrical systems -- to fully realize Indian Head’s existing, but partially dormant, production capacity. The facility is designed to research, develop, test and produce various energetics including explosives, propellants and other materials used in ordnance and propulsion systems.
Due to a shortage of private-sector producers, Indian Head’s first objective is surging solid-rocket motor production to help industry meet the growing demand for munitions like the Standard Missile family.
“The most important functional output for Indian Head given our adversaries is our solid-rocket motor production capability,” Johnson said. “In order for [RTX] to make as many missiles as we would like them to make, we need to increase the amount of solid-rocket motors available for them to use.”
The facility's total energetics workload is expected to quadruple within the next few years as demand for solid-rocket motors grows to several thousand units each year, Indian Head spokesperson Matt O’Neal told Inside Defense. The facility is also expected to deliver several million pounds of propellant and explosives in fiscal year 2024 as it works to make up for munitions shortages in strike, surface, undersea and ground warfare domains across the military service branches.
According to Johnson, a primary investment focus is upgrading Indian Head’s cast composite plant, which is used to produce materials for rocket motors, mines and warheads. "That's got to get well fast, and it's got to be a whole lot more capable because that's where the demand is,” he said.
While at one time, there were 12 commercial producers of large solid-rocket motors in the United States, today there are effectively only two, Johnson said. Both companies -- Northrop Grumman and L3Harris subsidiary Aerojet Rocketdyne -- are approximately 95% utilized already and face a growing “tidal wave of demand,” he added.
In the final quarter of FY-23, the Defense Department qualified an additional domestic producer of large solid-rocket motors, awarding New Mexico-based start-up X-Bow Systems a $64 million contract to expand manufacturing capacity and reduce the production costs of solid-rocket motors for the Pentagon’s still-developing hypersonic weapons programs.
While the development of hypersonics like the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike continues, military leaders expect to use large quantities of established munitions like the Standard Missile-6 and Maritime Strike Tomahawk if conflict with China arises. With rising concern over China’s growing arsenal, officials including Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro have called for larger missile stockpiles prepositioned in the Indo-Pacific.
According to budget documents, the Navy plans to increase procurement of Standard Missile variants from a consistent rate of 125 units per year through FY-24, to 195 missiles in FY-26 and over 300 in FY-28.
In a bid to boost weapons procurement and lower costs, the service’s FY-24 request also looks to enter multiyear procurement contracts for Standard Missiles, Naval Strike Missiles, Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles and Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles. Although, according to Navy Under Secretary Erik Raven, the lack of an FY-24 appropriation puts the service’s plan to “basically double” investment in the SM-6 at risk.
The supply chain for the Standard Missile family ends with RTX, the sole producer of these weapons. Without an adequate supply of rocket motors flowing to the contractor, RTX will be unable to make enough missiles to meet the Pentagon’s growing demand.
“Indian Head is the only place left in the United States that has any capacity with which to produce solid-rocket motors anymore, of consequence,” Johnson said. “It’s not good enough for me to unlock the latent capacity I have. I’ve got to be even more capable than I was before I started this journey. So now, I need to modernize.”
While near-term efforts focus on restoring existing facilities to boost production output, in the long run, the ECMP aims to expand and upgrade Indian Head’s capabilities, allowing it to better surge production of a variety of materials to supplement the commercial industrial base.
“ECMP is really about those two ideas,” Johnson said. “I’ve got to unlock the latent capacity by virtue of paying down things that I should have been paying for as a Navy -- 15- or 20-years’ worth -- and then I’ve got to modernize to get increased capacity. That's why it's a couple of billion [dollars] over 10 years.”
The Navy’s past and future arsenal
Located on the Potomac River for nearly 130 years, Indian Head was initially established as a naval ordnance center in the 19th century, with a central mission of testing guns and munitions. By the start of World War I, Indian Head transitioned into producing smokeless gunpowder -- a role the facility shouldered when commercial industry was unable to meet the Navy’s demand on its own.
The compound continued to expand through World War II, with research and production increasing. When supplies needed by the Navy were in short supply commercially, Indian Head was available as a sort of “Swiss Army knife for the Navy as the organic industrial base to supplement or surge in times of war,” Johnson said.
In the early 2000s, as the United States funneled investments into counterterrorism technologies, competitors like Russia and China were focused on improving their own munitions development and production capacity. As the 2010s drew to a close, these competitors had made great strides in leveling the playing field, while a lack of demand had caused the U.S. munitions industrial base to atrophy.
“What happens to infrastructure when you don't use it? It falls apart,” Johnson said. “And it falls apart quite literally, in the case of brick and mortar, but it also falls apart in terms of intellectual capital.”
“We used to have a big lead and now we don’t,” he added, saying that the United States also has little remaining advantage over China and Russia when it comes to the capabilities of the munitions being produced.
These competitors “didn’t have to spend a whole lot of money on [the global war on terrorism] and they spent their resources to catch us,” Johnson continued. “All this comparative advantage, or most of the comparative advantage that you have in terms of your capabilities, is gone, because they've taken that 20 years to catch up.”
Though Johnson began advocating for the Navy to bolster its munitions industrial base a decade ago, he said Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine combined with China's military buildup finally provided a “wake up slap” for the Pentagon. The ECMP plan was born, created by Johnson and the other members of the Indian Head team in response to a directive from the office of the Navy secretary.
A decade of infrastructure upgrades
Modernization work under the ECMP has already begun, with about $250 million invested in the first 50 infrastructure projects across FY-23 and FY-24.
While the plan’s total price tag may sound large, “it's like $2 billion, $800,000 at a time, because there's so many projects but any one of those things really isn't that expensive,” Johnson said.
But completing two decades worth of infrastructure upgrades will take time. For now, the plant is still limited by “hangnails,” Johnson said.
“There's potholes in the road, there's lights that don't allow us to operate at night, there's cracks in the loading dock which makes that loading dock not as usable,” he continued. “There's a whole lot of stuff that just hasn't been taken care of that I need to fix to basically unlock what I should be able to do already.”
Aging infrastructure makes it difficult for operations at Indian Head to run smoothly, said Director of Analysis and Integration Kevin Warring.
Upgrades to fire and lightning protection, dehumidification systems and electricity will be a large focus in upcoming infrastructure projects. Production downtime is a current problem, Warring added. If a storm occurs and lighting protection isn’t upgraded, power can shut off and disrupt operations.
“This is a once in a generation sort of opportunity to hit the reset button at the arsenal and organic industrial base,” Warring said. “You know, yes, we are addressing near-term problems, but it's also about setting the foundation over the long-term."
Excavators are currently digging up water lines across the facility to be replaced, ensuring reliable fire suppression if needed in the future. Upgrades like these are essential to making operations at Indian Head as safe as possible, Warring added.
Other investments planned include workforce initiatives, Warring said. This will encompass “significant outreach to not only the local community, so your local community college, for example, as well as regional efforts.”
At a recent community event, Johnson estimated 500 people would be hired at Indian Head over the next three-to-five years, bringing the total workforce up from about 2,700 today to over 3,000.
To achieve a quadrupled production of rocket motors, warheads and other energetics, a variety of workers must be hired, including researchers, technicians, accountants, financial managers and more, O’Neal told Inside Defense.
A top priority, however, is increasing the production of solid-rocket motors and other energetics -- a process made possible by a 420-gallon mixer located at Indian Head. The chemical components of rocket propellant are combined in this mixer before being cast and cured at the facility.
According to Explosives and Energetics Division Director Bernadette Wackerle, this process is a little bit like baking a cake, in that a series of ingredients are combined to produce a final product. Like a bakery, which makes many types of cake using the same kitchen gear, Indian Head can make many energetics products using the same production equipment, and the facility can switch from making one product to another very quickly.
But to increase output, the plant needs more 420-gallon mixers, Wackerle said. “In one case, we have a complex that we're currently designing where we're taking six existing facilities and we're going to put in another 420-gallon vertical mix, cast and cure complex there,” she said.
This future military construction project is still in the approval process but has been designated “high priority” among Naval Sea System Command’s warfare center projects, O’Neal said. Preliminary estimates suggest construction will cost $200-$500 million.
According to Johnson, Indian Head really needs three mixers to reach its production goals. However, only one company in the United States makes these mixers and supply chain issues have increased the difficulty of obtaining one.
“There are supply chain issues here that are just beyond the factories,” Johnson said. “They extend way back in and they've all been compromised, so it's going to take us time to get back to where we want to be.”
A hybrid business model
Transformation under the ECMP will stretch beyond Indian Head’s infrastructure and will see the center fundamentally and permanently change its business and investment model.
Today, Indian Head operates under a working capital model, with the base functioning more like a business than a typical naval command. Under this system, Indian Head receives no annual appropriation from the Navy to pay for maintenance, production or personnel. Instead, the facility must pay all its expenses with revenue generated from selling products to customers in the private sector.
According to Johnson, this model has exacerbated the base’s problems over the past two decades, because as industry experienced low munitions demand from the government, Indian Head also saw lower demand for its products from these companies. As a result, the facility had a tougher time paying for upkeep and was forced to charge high rates for its products.
“Every person I pay for, I've got to justify by virtue of my relationship with my customer and my costs,” Johnson said. “If you buy [fewer] rocket motors, and I still need 100 people, you pay a higher price. I have to recoup all my costs from my customers just like a business does.”
Within the ECMP, Indian Head is shifting to a hybrid model, where it will receive a slice of the Navy’s annual budget to cover routine upkeep, even in the years after major infrastructure projects are completed.
This baseline appropriation will “never go to zero,” Johnson said. “You own a $5 billion arsenal, and you have a responsibility to take care of it. You can't just assume that you're going to get that from your customers.”
The facility will continue to generate additional funds by selling rocket motors and other products to industry, but with the Navy’s appropriation, Indian Head is betting it will be able to charge lower prices to these customers. Industry will then use Indian Head’s materials to build weapons like the Standard Missile-6, before selling them back to the Defense Department.
The plan is intended to aid private companies in meeting this demand rather than competing with them. “It's not us against them,” Johnson said, pointing to the recent signing of a 10-year Public-Private Partnership agreement with Aerojet Rocketdyne to collaboratively boost solid-rocket motor production.
“In a few years when this is caught up, I'm going to wander away and go make something else that we need,” he continued. “Maybe you need me to make torpedo warheads. Maybe you need me to make mines. Maybe you need me to make aircrew escape systems. And I'll go where you need me.”
However, restoring a government-run plant capable of producing key weapon components should give the Pentagon some leverage when it comes to price control and help to hold industry accountable, Johnson noted.
Sustained investment under the ECMP, Johnson said, will ensure the facility is always prepared to surge production of any of its varied energetics products to support industry as demands change.
“Nobody pays for your fire department by the fire. You just pay for it upfront and it's always there,” Johnson said. “That's why ECMP never goes to zero. It gets that appropriation. Take care of your arsenal and it’ll always be ready for you.”