Ursa Major lands $91M to power a mini missile for F-35s

The U.S. Navy has awarded Ursa Major two contracts worth a combined $137 million to develop and qualify solid rocket motors for two new missiles: a small air-to-air missile for fighter jets and a ship-launched interceptor meant to eventually replace the Standard Missile family.

The Colorado company announced the awards on Oct. 5. The larger contract, worth $91 million, covers the motor for the Compact Air-to-Air Missile, or CAAM. The second, worth $46 million, covers the motor for the medium-range version of the Naval Modular Missile, or NMM. Funding comes through the Office of the Under Secretary of War.

CAAM is a short-range missile the U.S. Navy is developing for close-in air combat, sized to be carried inside the weapons bays of stealth fighters and future carrier-based drones. The Navy first showed the concept publicly in August, and service officials described it as an “inner boundary” weapon meant to increase how many missiles an aircraft can carry internally.

For CAAM, Ursa Major is designing a 7-inch (178 mm) motor. That is the same diameter as the AIM-120 AMRAAM and wider than the 5-inch AIM-9X Sidewinder, the Navy’s current short-range air-to-air missile. The company says the motor uses Highly Loaded Grain, a propellant design that packs more fuel into the motor case, giving a small missile more energy in the same volume. Ursa Major said it is building the development motor with the same methods it plans to use in full production, so it can move to high-rate manufacturing once the design is qualified.

The second contract covers a 10-inch (254 mm) motor for the medium-range NMM. The company described it as a quad-pack motor, meaning four missiles are sized to fit in a single shipboard launch cell, as the U.S. Navy already does with the Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile. Ursa Major said the motor is designed for high annual production volumes and compatibility with existing Navy shipboard launch systems. The U.S. Navy wants NMM to reach full capability by fiscal 2032 as a replacement for the Standard Missile family.

“By investing in CAAM and NMM, the Navy and OUSW are building solid rocket motor capacity now and getting new tactical air and naval capabilities into development sooner,” said Jason Meredith, president of Solid Missile Systems at Ursa Major. “Our Lynx manufacturing approach and growing energetics capacity enable us to design, build, test, qualify and field these motors faster to support the warfighter. Production is the bottleneck in missile programs right now, and that’s the part we’ve been building for.”

Lynx is Ursa Major’s name for its manufacturing process, which uses additive manufacturing, or industrial 3D printing, to produce most motor parts. Solid rocket motor production in the United States has for years been concentrated in two suppliers, Northrop Grumman and L3Harris, which owns Aerojet Rocketdyne. The Pentagon has been funding new entrants to expand capacity as demand for interceptors and long-range missiles has grown.

The new awards follow earlier work with the U.S. Navy. In July, the Navy gave Ursa Major $10 million to take its version of the MK 104 motor through critical design review and static fire testing. The MK 104 is the dual-thrust motor that powers Standard Missile-2 and Standard Missile-6 interceptors on Aegis destroyers and cruisers. In February, the company completed a $25 million cost-share program with the Navy and the Office of Strategic Capital, in which it designed, built and static-fired a 10-inch Highly Loaded Grain motor and developed a proprietary propellant for it. That work was carried out with the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at China Lake, California, and the Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head Division in Maryland.

Ursa Major is headquartered in Berthoud, Colorado, and runs additive manufacturing operations in Youngstown, Ohio. The company said its next steps on both programs are design, testing and qualification of the motors.