The SpaceWERX TACFI award is intended to advance Orbital’s path toward AI-driven factories for extreme environment materials—targeting the critical U.S. capacity gap in components that underpin missile defense, hypersonics, space vehicles, and nuclear energy.
CAMPBELL, Calif.—Advanced manufacturing company Orbital Composites, Inc. reported in June that it received a $1.9 million Tactical Funding Increase (TACFI) contract award from SpaceWERX, the innovation arm of the U.S. Space Force.
A 3D-printed rocket nozzle from Orbital Composites. (Image: Orbital Composites/PRNewswire)
The contract funds continued development of Orbital’s robotic additive manufacturing (AM) platform for extreme environment materials, the company said in a press release.
Orbital Composites described these materials as “components engineered to survive conditions that destroy conventional parts: temperatures exceeding 3,000°C; high-velocity combustion gases; and repeated thermal shock cycles.”
The award is said to reflect growing recognition across the defense, space, and energy sectors that the United States faces a structural shortfall in its ability to manufacture the advanced materials that underpin next-generation systems. Extreme environment materials—used in rocket nozzles, heat shields, hypersonic vehicle structures, jet engine hot sections, and nuclear reactors—have historically been constrained by prohibitive cost, 12- to 18-month production cycle times, and limited domestic capacity.
Orbital combines robotics, advanced materials, and physical AI to streamline manufacturing of extreme environment materials.
“This work addresses a critical barrier to the rapid scaling of manufacturing for high-temperature rocket nozzles to serve the U.S. warfighter,” said Orbital Composites Chief Executive Officer Amolak Badehsa, in a statement. “Our initial goal is to eliminate the supply constraints on solid rocket motors that have long limited what the warfighter can field—and this award is a concrete step toward that objective.
“This is also about restoring U.S. manufacturing dominance in materials that are foundational to our national security and economic competitiveness,” Badesha continued. “We are grateful to our SpaceWERX, AFWERX, and AFRL partners for their leadership in making that possible.”
Extreme environment materials sit at the intersection of some of the most urgent national security and strategic industrial priorities. Solid rocket motors, hypersonic vehicles, low-cost missile defense interceptors, nuclear microreactors, and space vehicles all depend on components that can be produced faster, less expensively, and in greater volume than current methods allow. Orbital’s technology is designed to serve these markets from a single scalable manufacturing platform.
“Extreme environment materials are the bottleneck in some of the most critical systems the U.S. fields, and today’s manufacturing methods are too slow, too costly, and too capacity-constrained to meet what the moment demands,” said Cole Nielsen-Cole, founder and chief technology officer for Orbital Composites, in a statement. “We are building toward a future where that constraint no longer exists—where AI-driven factories take in a design file and produce a mission-ready part, at operationally relevant cycle times and cost.”
The Orbital S is a multi-robot additive manufacturing platform for advanced composite rocket nozzles. (Image: Orbital Composites/PRNewswire)
Orbital is working with defense prime contractors, U.S. government program offices, and commercial space and energy providers to scale qualification and production. Meanwhile, it is investing in manufacturing capacity, program qualification, and the physical AI systems that underpin its autonomous production vision, the company said.
AFWERX, the innovation arm of the Department of the Air Force and a division within the Air Force Research Laboratory, partners with small businesses, startups, and nontraditional vendors to address challenges facing Airmen and Guardians. Headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, AFWERX strengthens the defense industrial base by expanding access to innovators, building partnerships, and accelerating the transition of critical technologies to operational capability.
SpaceWERX, the innovation arm of the U.S. Space Force and a division of AFWERX, partners with startups, small businesses, and nontraditional vendors to accelerate commercial space technologies for Guardians. Headquartered in Los Angeles, SpaceWERX connects industry innovation with defense needs to deliver capabilities faster, the release stated.