The White House will soon release a comprehensive study of the defense industrial base that warns against letting domestic sources of vital military items shrink to a “single point of failure.” However, that is precisely where the industrial base for large solid rocket motors may be headed if the Air Force doesn’t adjust its approach to competing a replacement for the aged Minuteman III missile. Large SRMs, as they are called, are essential to the nation’s nuclear deterrent and various space-launch applications, but the current competitive strategy does nothing to preserve competitive sources, and one of the two surviving domestic producers can’t stay in the business unless it gets at least some of the new missile’s motors. I have written a commentary for Forbes here.
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