Raytheon, Northrop Win DARPA Phase 2 for Composable Solid Rocket Motor Technology
Composable motors reduce the cost of fielding new variants — but only if procurement rules actually allow cross-platform qualification. If the Navy insists on platform-specific testing for SM-6 derivatives and the Air Force does the same for JASSM-ER, the benefit evaporates.
Watch whether the FY27 FYDP locks any new platform (hypersonic glide vehicle, long-range standoff) into the composable architecture as a requirement. That forces the supply base to adopt the standard and breaks the incumbent advantage Raytheon and Northrop currently hold in isolated programs.
This targets a hard constraint in U.S. missile architecture: solid rocket motors are currently bespoke per platform, which locks procurement timelines to individual programs and prevents economies of scale.
A composable motor standard would let the Pentagon swap propulsion across Tomahawk, JASSM, SM-6, and future hypersonic platforms without redesign — collapsing qualification cycles from 3-4 years to 12-18 months per new application. Raytheon and Northrop are the two primes with the most to gain from standardization; Raytheon dominates tactical missiles while Northrop holds strategic inventory.
If Phase 2 succeeds, the winner locks supply-chain control over propulsion for the entire tactical missile fleet through 2035.
What is the Phase 2 contract value, and what is the technical baseline being tested — are they targeting a single motor diameter/grain design or a modular family? Does DARPA expect a down-select to one prime by Phase 3, or will both continue?
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