The L3Harris difference: Delivering on Aerojet Rocketdyne

One year ago, as Ukraine’s military defended its citizens from Russian missile attacks and the United States sought to replenish its own arsenal, demand for solid rocket motors was skyrocketing. Aerojet Rocketdyne, a national asset, had been powering the tactical, air defense and missile defense systems demanded by the U.S. and our allies for decades. The company had a distinguished legacy for producing this critical propulsion, but it needed support to reach its full potential.

At L3Harris, we saw an opportunity to strategically apply our resources – from financial to operational – to strengthen the venerable propulsion provider. We committed to government and industry partners that our acquisition would ensure reliable access to the critical technologies necessary to support U.S. security, as well as our allies and partners.

The acquisition wouldn’t just strengthen Aerojet Rocketdyne, we said, it would benefit the defense industrial base and nation as a whole.

Now, we’re delivering on that commitment.

Over the past year, we’ve made remarkable progress improving the business, and our customers have noticed. Solid rocket motor production is up. On-time delivery has increased. We have reduced delayed deliveries by nearly half and are poised to further reduce this delivery backlog in the coming months. For some key programs, we’ve moved from overdue to ahead of contract deliveries.

This is just the start. We are actively pursuing a broad range of initiatives aimed at further fortifying the defense industrial base by continuing to enhance the company’s position as a leader in the solid rocket motor sector.

While integrating more than a century of collective experience and skills from the talented L3Harris and Aerojet Rocketdyne workforces, we’ve increased internal investment in Aerojet Rocketdyne by 40 percent year-over-year.

Sub-tier suppliers are critical to industry’s ability to meet existing demand and to surge when needed, and we have undertaken substantial efforts to bolster the companies that provide key SRM components. L3Harris provided more than $25 million in capital to its suppliers for facility modernization, workforce expansion and tooling. We’re also broadening our supplier network to qualify additional sources for key components, an approach that will diversify and strengthen sourcing across solid rocket motor production holistically. A robust supply chain is not only good for business – it’s good for the country.

We’re coupling these internal actions with investment from our industry and government customers – and the implementation of substantial process improvements and modernization and expansion efforts that are driving next-generation innovation and operational excellence.

One example of this is our “Factories of the Future” initiative, which is transforming our key production sites through a Center of Excellence model to optimize our facilities in Huntsville (AL), Camden (AR) and Orange County (VA) based on their areas of expertise. We’re building and upgrading more than a dozen manufacturing facilities across these sites, which will increase capacity to support heavy surges in demand – from today’s conflicts in Europe and the Middle East to emerging threats in INDOPACOM. At the same time, we’re expanding our ability to support large solid rocket motor production to power hypersonic, strategic and missile defense programs.

Our new and upgraded facilities incorporate automation and robotics to enhance safety and maximize efficiency to expedite flow through the manufacturing process. In addition to tapping into 3D modeling for rapid prototyping, we’re modernizing product development and engineering by incorporating digital transformation throughout our manufacturing process. This allows us to enhance our ability to share product data throughout to enable more informed, data driven and faster decision-making.

There’s no question that there are still many improvements to make. But we’re confident we’ve answered the Department of Defense’s call for strengthened competition. We can now turn to the art of the possible – not only optimizing manufacturing, and reducing costs for our customers, but also building upon our strong legacy of innovation to pioneer what’s next in propulsion.

As the industry’s Trusted Disruptor, we must move fast, forward – forging a stronger Aerojet Rocketdyne to power U.S. and allied defenses today and tomorrow.

There’s no option other than success – the world is depending on it.

Dr. Ross Niebergall is President of the Aerojet Rocketdyne segment for L3Harris Technologies. In this role, Dr. Niebergall is responsible for business strategy, financial performance, successful execution and growth of Aerojet Rocketdyne, a proven provider of world-class propulsion systems and energetics to the DoD, NASA and other partners and allies worldwide.