Construction has started in Hurt, Virginia, on a factory meant to turn out thousands of solid rocket motors a year for U.S. tactical missiles. Avio USA broke ground on the plant on Sept. 29, 2026. The factory is being developed to supply motors for programs at Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, with construction expected to finish in late 2028 and production to begin in early 2029.
The Hurt site is Avio USA’s first manufacturing facility in the United States, not the country’s first rocket motor plant. Avio USA, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, is a subsidiary of Italy’s Avio S.p.A., which builds solid-propellant motors for defense and its own Vega family of space launchers.
The groundbreaking was announced in a Sept. 29 release carried on Lockheed Martin’s newsroom, datelined Hurt. It says the plant at the Southern Virginia Multimodal Park will give Avio USA capacity to produce “thousands of solid rocket motors annually for U.S. tactical missile programs,” and that it is being developed to support requirements across the U.S. defense industry, “including programs for Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.” HITT Contracting is the general contractor, according to the release.
Both prime contractors put executives on the record in the Sept. 29 release. Tim Cahill, president of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, called the plant “a significant step toward a more robust and diverse supply chain for solid rocket motors that are critical to our nation’s defense.” Bob Butz, senior vice president of operations, supply chain and quality at Raytheon, an RTX business, said modern production facilities focused on critical defense technologies “are essential to strengthening national readiness.”
The release does not name specific missiles or announce supply contracts, and no motor has yet come off a line in Virginia. As of the Sept. 29 groundbreaking, what exists is a site, a contractor and a schedule. Avio USA chief executive James Syring framed the company’s aim in the release as being “an independent, open-source merchant supplier, able to support multiple customers and programs and provide major defense primes with an additional source for this critical capability.”
Jobs, size and money: the figures shift by document
The project’s numbers have moved between announcements, and each is stated here with its source. The Sept. 29 release’s headline promises “over 1,000 jobs,” while its body says the company expects to create roughly 1,500 technical jobs in Southern Virginia. It describes the plant as approximately 900,000 square feet.
Avio’s own Feb. 23, 2026, release on Virginia’s incentive package put the investment at more than $500 million and the job count at more than 1,000. It said a state commission had approved a special appropriation of up to $97.7 million, subject to approval by the Virginia General Assembly. A City of Danville notice on the same announcement lists the facility at 860,000 square feet and adds more than $33.6 million in value from participating localities.
The project first surfaced in Avio’s Dec. 11, 2025, release announcing that Avio USA had selected Virginia, at an investment of roughly $500 million. In it, Syring said the factory “will help to contribute needed capacity for solid rocket motors today and into the future, meeting critical National Security requirements.”
Why a new motor supplier matters
The supplier count behind American missile motors has been shrinking for decades. The Government Accountability Office’s October 2017 report on solid rocket motors found that “since 1995, the industry has consolidated from six U.S. manufacturers to two U.S. manufacturers,” naming Aerojet Rocketdyne and Orbital ATK. GAO warned that the consolidation “increases the risk of production delays and disruptions” when key components come from a single source.
Avio USA is pitching itself into that gap as a supplier not tied to one prime contractor, a claim the Hurt plant will have to prove once motors are qualified and delivered. Per the Sept. 29 release, the next verified milestones are construction completion in late 2028 and the start of production in early 2029.
Top image: Filament winding of the casing for the P80 solid rocket motor, first stage of Europe’s Vega launcher. Image Credit: Gdipasquale1 — CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Combat Rated editors prior to publication.