Pentagon orders mass missile production from five companies

The U.S. Department of War has signed framework agreements with five defense companies to produce more than 10,000 low-cost cruise missiles and 12,000 hypersonic missiles over the next several years, in the most aggressive American missile mass-production commitment in decades.

The announcements, made through official Department of War and company channels, establish two parallel programs. The Low-Cost Containerized Missiles program awarded framework agreements to Anduril, CoAspire, Leidos, and Zone 5, with the Department positioning itself to procure 10,000-plus LCCMs over three years starting in 2027. The hypersonic program selected a single company, Castelion, committing to a minimum of 500 Blackbeard missiles annually once the system achieves testing and validation, with authorizations and appropriations sought for more than 12,000 total missiles over five years.

The Department framed both programs explicitly as responses to a presidential and secretarial mandate. “These agreements will rapidly field effective and affordable kinetic mass for the Joint Force at scale, acting directly on the mandate from President Trump and Secretary Hegseth to strengthen America’s Arsenal of Freedom,” per the Department’s announcement. The Arsenal of Freedom framing is deliberate: it positions missile mass production as a strategic priority equivalent in importance to the munitions buildup that sustained Allied operations in World War II, and it signals that the current administration views the United States’ existing precision munitions inventory as insufficient for the conflict scenarios it is preparing against.

Anduril, the California-based defense technology company founded in 2017 and one of the most prominent non-traditional defense entrants of the past decade, has signed a production agreement to deliver its Surface-Launched Barracuda-500M at scale. The company committed to a minimum of 1,000 rounds per year for three years, with the first rounds shipping in the first half of 2027. The Barracuda-500M is described as an affordable missile designed for long-range precision strikes, fitting the LCCM program’s core requirement for a weapon that can be produced in volume at a cost point that makes mass deployment economically sustainable.

Leidos, the Reston, Virginia-based defense and technology company listed on the NYSE, will deliver an initial 3,000 Low-Cost Containerized Munitions under its framework agreement. Leidos Chief Executive Officer Tom Bell described the commitment in the company’s statement. “We’re answering the Department of War’s call to revolutionize the procurement of critical capabilities at scale, with a focus on speed to operational capability,” Bell said. “This agreement reflects the department’s appreciation of Leidos’ defense tech prowess and their trust in our proven history in delivering advanced missile technologies.” The company began LCCM work in December, reaching a conceptual design with the Pentagon capable of achieving all mission objectives, and will start production in 2027 after completing full system design, development, and test.

The Leidos LCCM is company-funded in its development phase, drawing on technologies from the company’s AGM-190A Small Cruise Missile program, which completed a successful test launch that the company has previously publicized. The LCCM is approximately twice the size of the AGM-190A, offering increased mission effectiveness and fuel capacity to maximize range, per Leidos’ announcement. The design incorporates a modular airframe and a common Weapon Open Systems Architecture, enabling rapid integration, upgrades, and mission adaptability across different launch platforms. While initially designed for ground launch in the containerized configuration, the modular design could support maritime platform integration and air-launched variants in future configurations. Leidos will expand its workforce and facilities in Huntsville, Alabama, and McEwen, Tennessee, to support production.

Castelion’s Blackbeard hypersonic missile occupies the more demanding end of the two-program package. Hypersonic weapons, typically defined as systems capable of sustaining flight above Mach 5 in maneuvering trajectories, present significantly harder interception challenges than subsonic cruise missiles because their speed and maneuverability compress the engagement windows available to defending air defense systems. The commitment to 500 Blackbeard missiles annually, pending testing and validation, and the intent to seek authorizations for more than 12,000 over five years, represents a scale of hypersonic production ambition that would substantially exceed anything the United States has previously committed to in that weapon category. Castelion has not yet completed testing and validation, making the production commitment conditional on that milestone, but the framework agreement establishes the procurement intent and scale before the technical milestone is reached.

The broader strategic context for both programs is the munitions consumption data from Ukraine and the planning assumptions that data has forced on U.S. military planners. Ukraine has fired artillery shells, surface-to-air missiles, and anti-tank guided missiles at rates that exhausted Western stockpiles far faster than pre-war planning models anticipated. A sustained high-intensity conflict between the United States and a peer adversary — specifically China in a Taiwan scenario — would impose similar or greater consumption rates on precision munitions inventories that have historically been sized for shorter, lower-intensity contingencies. Producing 10,000 cruise missiles and 12,000 hypersonic weapons over three to five years is the Department of War’s stated answer to that planning gap.