Raytheon Taps Ursa Major for 3D Printed Solid Rocket Motors

Ursa Major, a Colorado-based company specializing in leveraging additive manufacturing (AM) for rocket propulsion, announced a successful missile flight test conducted with Raytheon, an RTX company, as part of a US Army contract. For the long-range missile application, Raytheon chose Ursa Major’s solid rocket motor (SRM) AM process, which the latter company first publicly announced in November 2023, following extensive success with developing a modular workflow for liquid rocket engine production.

According to Ursa Major, the next phase of the Raytheon collaboration will entail incorporation of improvements in the underlying manufacturing techniques, towards the end of additional flight tests in 2025. Ursa Major anticipates that qualification of the process will happen by 2026.

The Department of Defense (DoD) has signaled persistently growing demand for 3D printed rocket engines generally, and 3D printed SRMs in particular, owing to the shortages faced by supply chains relying on conventional manufacturing, and the cost-efficiency potential of on-demand production. Ursa Major is one of a handful of startups that have reaped the rewards of this shift in DoD’s approach to procurement.

In a press release, Ursa Major CEO Dan Jablonsky said, “Ursa Major has utilized [AM] to complete motor development, manufacturing, and testing in unprecedented timelines, resulting in nearly 300 static test fires this year. The innovative manufacturing techniques we employ are yielding agile [SRM] solutions with the design flexibility needed to expand the capabilities of the US military. Ursa Major is poised to scale the production of higher-performing [SRMs] at the pace and volume the country requires and at a price the country can afford.”

President of Land and Air Defense Systems at Raytheon, Tom Laliberty, said, “These long-range [SRMs] will allow the US Army and allies to strike farther and faster than anything our adversaries have in their arsenals. This long-range rocket motor technology fills the essential role of providing affordable precision fires, while increasing range, safety, and magazine depth.”

As I noted earlier this week in a story about US Navy testing of 3D printed bomb casings, AM should be a major winner of any Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) efforts to reduce waste in the Pentagon budget. Ursa Major is perhaps the company most immediately ready to make the case that AM must be a centerpiece of any realistic strategy to streamline DoD procurement.

Among other factors in the company’s favor, Ursa Major is printing rocket motors for all three major branches of the US military, which could be a huge boost to the critical task of standardizing AM activities across the DoD as a whole. Accomplishing that task is a requirement for the success of any serious push to deploy AM at scale as a defense hardware cost-reducer.

A partnership between a major prime like Raytheon and a small newcomer like Ursa Major also sets a crucial precedent for how AM can actually cross the threshold into becoming a more or less permanent part of the defense budget. The more cases we see of this sort of collaboration, the more reason we have to be optimistic about AM’s future as a legitimate tool for production at scale.

Image courtesy of Ursa Major