US Army Takes Delivery Of 100,000th Hellfire Missile Rocket Motor

Orbital ATK recently completed 100,000th delivery of AGM-114 tactical motor, a rocket motor that propels the HELLFIRE missile, to the US Army.

Orbital ATK designs and manufactures the high performance, minimum-smoke HELLFIRE missile rocket motor at the Allegany Ballistics Laboratory (ABL) in Rocket Center, West Virginia, and is the sole supplier of the rocket motor used across the entire family of missile variants.

At a ceremony celebrating the milestone earlier this month at Orbital ATK’s ABL facility, Col. Dave Warnick of U.S. Army, Program Executive Office Missiles and Space, Joint Attack Munitions Systems, said: “This is a great program that has continued to deliver a quality tool, at the quantity we need, to do our job and keep American soldiers safe,” said Warnick referring to the increase in demand over the past few years. “The HELLFIRE is going straight from the factory to the front lines where they are being utilized by our soldiers”.

Mike Kahn, president of Orbital ATK’s Defense Systems Group echoed the sentiment. “Our responsibility to the warfighter drives us to improve and innovate. We are dedicated to deliver the best tactical propulsion and controls products to our customers and continue to invest in our people and facilities to assure readiness and overmatch for the future.”

Orbital ATK is upgrading the current version of the HELLFIRE rocket motor to include insensitive munitions, called the IM HELLFIRE. By incorporating reduced sensitivity propellants, low-cost bonded end closure composite cases, and passive thermal mitigation systems, Orbital ATK has developed a system that meets all current propulsion interface requirements for the existing HELLFIRE and will provide enhanced safety for the warfighter.