X-Bow to build boosters for CoAspire’s CHAOS cruise missile

X-Bow Systems will build the solid rocket booster that launches CoAspire’s ground-based cruise missile under the U.S. Navy’s CHAOS program, an effort to give allied nations a low-cost weapon for striking ships and land targets.

The Albuquerque, New Mexico, company said Tuesday that CoAspire, the prime contractor, selected it to develop and produce the ground-launched solid rocket motor boosters for the Coalition Heterogeneous Affordable Offensive Strike program. Neither company disclosed the value of the subcontract, the number of motors involved or a delivery schedule.

CoAspire’s CHAOS weapon is a ground-launched version of its Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile-Extended Range, or RAACM-ER, which cruises on a small turbojet. Because a turbojet cannot get a missile off a launcher from a standstill, a solid rocket motor fires first, pushes the missile clear and accelerates it until the wings and jet engine can take over, after which the spent booster falls away. The Tomahawk, the Harpoon and the Naval Strike Missile all use the same arrangement when fired from ships or ground vehicles, so the concept itself is long established; what CHAOS changes is the price target and the intended buyers.

The U.S. Navy selected CoAspire for CHAOS on July 17 under a $70 million prototype Other Transaction Agreement covering Phases 1 and 2. The agreement tasks the Virginia company with designing, building, testing and delivering the ground-launched RAACM-ER to the Navy’s munitions portfolio office and its PMX-201 program office, and CoAspire said at the time that the system would pair the missile with a booster and launcher designed specifically for the program. Tuesday’s announcement identifies who will make that booster.

The Navy intends to offer the missile through Foreign Military Sales to allies and coalition partners that need an affordable maritime strike weapon that can be produced in large numbers, although neither the service nor CoAspire has named the countries involved. CHAOS grew out of an earlier requirement known as Coalition Affordable Maritime Strike, which sought a missile costing about $1.5 million that could hit ships at least 140 nautical miles (260 km) away with a warhead under 500 pounds (227 kg). The Navy has not published a unit price target for CHAOS itself.

CoAspire is not the only contractor in the program. In September, the Navy awarded Zone 5 Technologies $65 million to build a maritime strike version of its AGM-188 Rusty Dagger, and the two companies also compete in low-cost missile efforts run by the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army.

The RAACM family began as an air-launched weapon roughly the size of a 500-pound Mk 82 bomb. CoAspire builds much of the airframe through additive manufacturing, which the company says frees internal volume for fuel and lets it introduce new variants without retooling a production line. The larger RAACM-ER is the basis for the CHAOS missile, and CoAspire claims it can reach maritime targets at up to 1,000 nautical miles (1,850 km), a figure that has not been demonstrated publicly. A closely related ground-launched version called GHOST, which also relies on a solid rocket motor to leave its container, is CoAspire’s entry in the Pentagon’s Low-Cost Containerized Munition program.

“Rebuilding the nation’s arsenal demands a fundamentally different industrial base,” said Jason Hundley, founder and CEO of X-Bow. “Our digital-first manufacturing and proprietary Additive Manufacturing of Solid Propellant technology are built to deliver advanced, reliable systems at a cost and velocity the legacy industry can’t match.”

Conventional solid rocket motors are usually produced by mixing propellant in large batches and casting it into motor cases, a process that involves long curing times and dedicated tooling for each design. X-Bow uses an additive process that it says shortens that cycle and adapts more easily to different motor sizes, and it opened a production site in Luling, Texas, in late 2025.

The CHAOS selection is X-Bow’s third booster award in three weeks. On Oct. 7, the company received a U.S. Navy prototype agreement worth up to $69.7 million to develop a booster for a next-generation Navy weapon and to install tooling in Luling for up to 500 motors a year. Five days later, Leidos picked X-Bow to supply booster motors for its entry in the U.S. Army’s Low-Cost Containerized Munition program, with full-rate booster production