WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin on Thursday broke ground on a new 87,000 square foot production facility in Alabama, an investment that lays the groundwork for the company to quadruple the rate of THAAD interceptor production.
The newly christened, and notably-named, “Building 47” in Troy, Ala., nearly doubles the current production space for THAAD interceptors, and will also house future work on the Next Generation Interceptor program, the company stated.
During the groundbreaking ceremony, Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet said the new facility was an example of “[Lockheed’s] willingness to make formal major investments before we have a contract.”
The Trump administration has made boosting munitions stockpiles a critical priority following the war in Ukraine and ongoing conflict with Iran. Pentagon leaders hope to push defense contractors to invest company funds to stand up new production facilities or upgrade older ones by cementing multiyear production deals that would give companies more certainty that demand for weapons will be sustained years into the future.
So far, the department has signed multiyear framework agreements with Lockheed for THAAD interceptors and the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), and inked an $4.7 billion undefinitized contract for the Patriot missile defense system’s PAC-3 missiles. However, those deals — and others that include multiyear agreements for Tomahawk missiles and key components — will only be made final after Congress passes legislation approving that funding, expected as part of the fiscal 2027 budget process.
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Lockheed intends to spend between $8 billion and $9 billion through 2030 on new or modernized facilities for expanded munitions production, Taiclet said. That includes about $1.25 billion already spent on projects that a new Munitions Acceleration Center in Camden, Ark. About $900 million to $1.1 billion will be spent on the Troy site.
The company will also add 4,500 jobs across the country tied to the munitions ramp up, Taiclet said.
“Today we are demonstrating execution. These aren’t just ideas or papers going back and forth,” he said at the groundbreaking. “We know it’s going to be good, and we know it’s going to happen.”
Taiclet added that he looks forward to future agreements to accelerate production for defense technologies that include “not just missiles.”
“The department’s thinking broadly, so are we, and I think we’re going to be doing a lot more groundbreakings, figuratively, and also in real time, too,” he said.
Asked by Breaking Defense during a later news conference about ongoing discussions on future agreements, both Taiclet and Michael Duffey, the Pentagon’s acquisition czar, declined to lay out specifics.
“Where there’s applicability of a model like this outside [munitions] that creates the speed and volume that we need to equip the warfighter, we’re very open to considering those opportunities,” Duffey said.
Taiclet added that Lockheed has submitted a proposal to produce “radar systems” on a multiyear basis, but did not provide further details.
There are also efforts to incorporate the lower tiers of the supply chain in the munitions multiyear production deals. Lockheed and the Pentagon are currently creating “heads of agreement” for major suppliers that lay out the same economic incentives that the framework agreements provide the defense primes.
“When the large suppliers complete those agreements, they’ll be under the same economic and commercial framework as we are at Lockheed Martin as the OEM for Patriot and THAAD,” Taiclet said, adding that not all agreements have been completed.
