A Texas company, Aeon Industrial, building military equipment for the U.S. Department of Defense has announced building its first manufacturing site on Tuesday.
The planned armory, spread over 140,000-square-foot (13,000-square-meter) is expected to produce missile systems, interceptors, high-voltage fuzes for drones, seekers and other critical components to boost the U.S. munitions supply chain.
“The munitions supply chain depends on too few suppliers. The 140,000-square-foot Armory will add manufacturing capacity at critical bottlenecks, enabling industry and the Department of War to scale production,” the company said in a post on social media.
The company did not disclose the location of the facility, which is soon expected to meet its initial production target in coming months. The official announcement did not share numbers of missiles or interceptor that it plans to build at the upcoming production site.
It also noted that to boost the production further, it has begun work on developing a second armory, however, the whereabouts of the proposed site were also missing from the company’s official statement.
Next-gen weapon systems
The Austin based company already mass produces low-cost drone fuzes and calls them MERC. The high-voltage electronic safe-and-arm fuze is a mechanical device that controls the detonation of a warhead carried by a drone. The company handles volume production with 10,000 units of these fuzes on the line. Along with warhead maker Mountain Horse Solutions, Aeon had flown drones from several top-performing companies at the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance Gauntlet at Fort Carson, Colorado, it said in September. At the Colorado event, competitive testing of one-way attack drones was conducted.
It noted that its most mature product MERC, is designed in such a way the military can use the same fuze across multiple platforms. The component works across quadcopters, fixed-wing drones, missiles and interceptors, which lets one component supply several of these weapons at once, the statement added.
The company is building “next-generation weapon systems,” said Christopher “Gus” Jennings, Aeon’s director of growth and a former U.S. Army Special Forces soldier. However, he did not elaborate which missile or interceptor designs will be built at the Armory first.
Beyond manufacturing fuze devices for unmanned aerial vehicles, it is making headway into the country’s air defense. It figured as one the 10 finalists in the U.S. Army’s xTech Apex Intercept competition is looking for cheaper weapons to supplement the Patriot air and missile defense system against cruise missiles, short-range ballistic missiles and other aerial threats.
The US company submitted a joint low-cost interceptor proposal with European missile maker Destinus was selected on September 30 this year. From the ten finalists selected nearly a month ago, the U.S. Army plans to pick up to three winners in that category by December 31, 2026.