- Kratos opened a new 22,500‑square‑foot propulsion facility in Auburn Hills, Michigan to produce Spartan turbojet engines.
- The company says the site supports concurrent manufacturing of all four Spartan engine types with capacity for more than 50,000 units per year.
Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. has opened a new propulsion manufacturing facility in Auburn Hills, Michigan, aimed at accelerating production of its Spartan family of turbojet engines to meet growing U.S. defense demand for affordable, high-volume air power.
The 22,500-square-foot facility includes office space, production lines, assembly areas, and a multi-station test cell designed to support concurrent manufacturing of all four Spartan engine models, which range from 30 to over 200 pounds of thrust.
According to Kratos, the new site is capable of producing more than 50,000 military-grade engines annually. The Spartan engine line is designed to power high-volume, cost-efficient systems including unmanned aerial targets, cruise missile surrogates, and low-cost attritable platforms.
Kratos says its investment in the facility supports efforts to build up the U.S. defense industrial base and meet the Pentagon’s requirement for “affordable mass”—a strategy focused on rapidly deploying large quantities of lower-cost systems to complement traditional high-end assets.
In a statement, the company said, “Kratos’ investment in the new facility demonstrates our commitment to advancing affordable mass inventory levels, producing a large number of military-grade, affordable turbojet engines while expanding crucial infrastructure needed to accelerate propulsion system inventory levels as a part of the U.S. defense industrial base.”
To support high-rate production, the facility is optimized for efficient inventory management, parallel assembly, and modular testing. Shared areas support both incoming and outgoing inspection processes, while inventory and test operations are separated for efficiency.
Steve Fendley, President of Kratos’ Unmanned Systems Division, emphasized the strategic value of a production-first model. “Achieving affordable mass requires effective planning and management at all levels—from supply chain to military customer delivery aligned and optimized for cost, capacity, and resilience,” Fendley said.
He added, “Our production-first mindset has been key to our success in realizing high-reliability, military-grade engines with key operational features that can be produced affordably and delivered at high rates. This is a result of our focus on producibility and cost right from the start, rather than the traditional performance first, manufacturability and cost second approach.”
Kratos has become a central player in the Department of War’s shift toward distributed airpower, offering propulsion systems that support autonomous and expendable platforms across a range of mission sets. The company’s turbojet technologies have been integrated into a variety of U.S. and allied programs involving target drones, attritable strike aircraft, and next-generation missile concepts.
The Auburn Hills site represents a broader trend in defense manufacturing — the drive to field scalable systems in volume to meet pacing threats. The facility is expected to contribute to long-term propulsion inventory requirements aligned with emerging unmanned and manned-unmanned teaming efforts.