L3Harris Advances Construction at Arkansas Rocket Motor Campus

L3Harris Technologies (LHX ) has completed 90% of the civil construction earthwork for the more than 20 building pads at its Arkansas Advanced Propulsion Facilities campus in Camden, the company’s Missile Solutions business reported on October 1, 2026. Construction teams are now progressing with building layout, concrete slab foundation placement and metal shell construction at the solid rocket motor site, which sits within a company capacity expansion designating more than $1 billion to grow the Camden location.

The completed earthwork enables crews to install utilities from the main roads into each future production building area. The project has been underway since a November 2025 groundbreaking, and L3Harris describes the campus as set to become the nation’s epicenter for medium and large solid rocket motor production. When complete, the campus is expected to increase large solid rocket motor capacity six-fold, according to the company.

Schedule Through Mid-2027

The completed milestones will be followed by building interior fit-outs, which prepare each facility for turnover, the stage at which construction is finished and the building is handed over for operational readiness. Teams continue to procure long-lead equipment through critical and final design reviews, and key equipment deliveries are scheduled to begin later in 2026.

Over the next few months, slab foundations and full metal building assembly will be completed for multiple buildings. Key production equipment, including eight new propellant cure ovens, is slated for installation during that timeframe, which L3Harris calls a significant step toward establishing operational capability. The first completed buildings are planned for release to production teams in mid-2027.

L3Harris characterizes the Camden project as part of a multi-billion-dollar investment in solid rocket motor capacity expansion. The campus is being engineered with optimized building operations, automated process controls and advanced material handling and transportation systems that use autonomous mobile robots, which the company says will streamline flow and reduce cycle time. Smart safety technologies, including automated crane position identification and interlocked door systems, will strengthen safe operations while supporting higher throughput, according to the company.

The design also includes additional pre-planned buildings, among them an option for a second casting facility, that the company says can be built quickly if further acceleration is required. Across its solid rocket motor production sites in Alabama, Arkansas and Virginia, L3Harris is constructing approximately 60 new facilities and expanding its manufacturing footprint by more than 1 million square feet. The Camden campus is purpose-built to support solid rocket motors for tactical missiles, air defense systems, hypersonic vehicles, interceptors and missile defense targets.

From Announcement to Groundbreaking

L3Harris and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced plans for the campus on July 17, 2025, then scoped at more than 130,000 square feet of added manufacturing and office space on the company’s 2,000-acre energetic production site, which employed approximately 1,300 local team members. The company said at the time that it expected to begin construction in 2025 and anticipated production beginning in 2027.

L3Harris, Sanders and state and local leaders broke ground on the campus on November 18, 2025, joined by Aerojet Rocketdyne President Ken Bedingfield. At the groundbreaking, the campus was scoped at more than 20 buildings across 110 acres, adding 230,000 square feet of manufacturing and office space and bringing total manufacturing square footage at the Camden site to more than 1.5 million. Of the more than $400 million campus investment stated at the time, the company planned to spend $193 million with Arkansas businesses. Chair and CEO Christopher Kubasik called the project “a generational project and investment” at the ceremony.

The November 2025 announcement also described automation features planned for the campus, including precision manufacturing with robotic systems, automated quality inspections, real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance analytics and autonomous ground vehicles for motor transportation. It said the company was investing more than half a billion dollars at its major solid rocket motor sites across the country, including Culpeper, Virginia; Camden; and Huntsville, Alabama.

L3Harris has produced rocket motors in Camden since 1979, and the location produces more than 115,000 solid rocket motors a year. The company states it has produced large solid rocket motors for critical defense programs for more than 60 years, including powering every U.S. Air Force Intercontinental Ballistic Missile ever fielded. In 2020, the company opened a 17,000 square foot Engineering, Manufacturing and Development facility to deliver large solid rocket motors for next-generation national security programs including strategic deterrence, hypersonic and missile defense.