Kratos Starts Construction of Indiana Radar and Hypersonics Complexes

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions (KTOS ) announced on October 14, 2026, that it held a joint groundbreaking ceremony that day at the Westgate Academy in Odon, Indiana, marking the beginning of construction for its new Helios and AN/SPY-1 facilities. The facilities are the product of $35 million in funding through the Department of War’s Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) program and cost-sharing from Kratos, according to the company.

Kratos also described the $35 million as its own investment, which it said reinforces its commitment to the Department of War and its mission partners by expanding the company’s engineering, integration, testing, and manufacturing capabilities. The new footprint will feature two distinct, purpose-built complexes: the Indiana Radar Integration Complex (IRIC) and the HELIOS Arc Jet & Laser Facility.

The IBAS program has funded other recent Department of War industrial-base investments. On September 14, 2026, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Policy, in partnership with the Economic Defense Unit, announced a $450 million redeemable preferred equity investment in The Elmet (ELMT ) Group through the same program, according to the office’s Industrial Base Policy news index.

Radar Sustainment and Hypersonic Testing Facilities

The IRIC is an approximately 183,000-square-foot facility designed to establish a long-term organic capability for the repair, testing, integration, and sustainment of the U.S. Navy’s AN/SPY-1 radar system. Kratos said the complex will provide a scalable infrastructure and workforce foundation to support legacy and next-generation radar systems, and characterized it as designed to improve Navy fleet readiness, reduce sustainment bottlenecks, and increase critical surge capacity.

The HELIOS Arc Jet & Laser Facility will combine a 20-25 MW arc jet capability with a 200-kW fiber laser system. Kratos said the complex will advance next-generation directed energy technologies, delivering high-energy laser solutions for integrated air and missile defense, counter-unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS), and force protection missions. The company said Helios is being designed to address current gaps in the U.S. defense industrial base by providing testing infrastructure for thermal protection systems used in hypersonic vehicles, and that it aims to bridge the gap between low-fidelity screening solutions and large-scale arc jet facilities at government testing sites, increasing opportunities for material evaluation in support of hypersonic and strategic national defense efforts.

Dave Carter, president of Kratos Defense and Rocket Support Services, said, “The groundbreaking of the IRIC and Helios facilities furthers Kratos’ support to the U.S. Armed Forces.” Carter said that bringing advanced radar sustainment and hypersonic material testing together under one strategic umbrella addresses critical readiness bottlenecks, and pointed to Indiana’s mission, talent, partnerships, and industrial commitment.

Eric DeMarco, president and chief executive officer of Kratos, said, “Kratos is making deliberate internal investments to rapidly develop and field advanced capabilities our warfighters require against peer adversaries.” DeMarco called the IRIC and Helios facilities prime examples of the company’s commercial-investment approach to national security and said Kratos is proud to expand its partnership with the state of Indiana.

AN/SPY-1 Award and Indiana Expansion

The radar complex follows Kratos’ October 6, 2025, announcement that it had been awarded Phase 1 to begin developing an organic sustainment capability for the Navy’s AN/SPY-1 radar systems. The single-award agreement, known internally to Kratos as Project Anaconda, carried an initial total projected ceiling of $175 million across multiple phases, the company said at the time.

That award release described the IRIC as a Kratos-owned and -operated 155,000-square-foot facility located within 1.5 miles of Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Crane, expected to be operational in 2027. The groundbreaking release describes the complex as approximately 183,000 square feet.

Under Phase 1, Kratos said it would establish the foundation for the IRIC to support AN/SPY-1 battle sparing, testing, and prototyping; develop initial organic repair, overhaul, and modernization processes for the radar’s transmitter, signal processor, and antenna subsystems; advance digital engineering, artificial intelligence-enabled data management, and prototype sustainment technologies; and coordinate with NSWC Crane, Program Executive Office Integrated Warfare Systems, and Navy fleet stakeholders. The contract will be executed in multiple phases, with additional work authorized as milestones are achieved, according to the award release.

Kratos said in that release that the AN/SPY-1 radar enables ballistic missile defense, integrated air and missile warfare, and persistent maritime domain awareness across Aegis-equipped cruisers and destroyers, with many systems projected to remain in service through 2065.

The Indiana build-out began earlier in 2025. The Indiana Economic Development Corporation announced on March 18, 2025, that Kratos planned to establish operations in the state and broke ground on the Indiana Payload Integration Facility at the WestGate@Crane Technology Park near NSWC Crane. Kratos expected to initially invest more than $50 million to construct and equip the 68,000-square-foot facility, which will house an office, laboratory, and integration complex supporting hypersonic launch programs including the Multi-Service Advanced Capabilities Hypersonic Testbed (MACH-TB). The state said the facility was expected to reach operational readiness by the end of 2026 and to create more than 100 high-tech jobs with an average annual wage exceeding $80,000.

The IEDC committed up to $9 million in incentive-based tax credits, up to $7 million in regional development tax credits, and up to $2 million in conditional structured performance payments, tied to Kratos’ plans to invest more than $456 million in Indiana and create up to 628 jobs by the end of 2029. The incentives are performance-based, meaning the company is eligible to claim state benefits once Indiana workers are hired, the IEDC said.

The state announcement also noted that Kratos’ Prometheus Energetics joint venture planned an energetics, solid rocket motor, and munitions production facility on a roughly 550-acre site in Bloomfield, Indiana, also located near NSWC Crane.