Миссисипийским аэрокосмическим компаниям придется адаптироваться к переходу Пентагона на дешевые автономные системы

Drooling time may be limited for state’s aerospace industries Published 11:09 pm Friday, August 14, 2026 Mississippi’s burgeoning defense industries must be drooling over the Pentagon’s proposed $1.5 trillion budget request. More ships, more missiles, more aircraft, more drones, all mean more lucrative production contracts. As Sid Salter recently wrote, with Sen. Roger Wicker chairing the Senate Armed Services Committee and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith joining the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, Mississippi companies stand to benefit from increased defense spending. Our pantheon of defense industries has surged. The fastest growing sector appears to be in aerospace systems. As MDA now touts, “We produce 3x the national average of rocket engines.” Firehawk in Crawford is establishing a rocket-system manufacturing and integration facility to make rocket motors, rockets, and munitions using proprietary 3D-printed propellant technology. Anduril in McHenry is expanding its solid-rocket-motor capacity from approximately 600 to more than 6,000 tactical-scale solid rocket motors annually. General Atomics is expanding its Shannon operation to produce next-generation defense systems such as the Bullseye precision-guided strike missile and 155mm-class Long-Range Maneuvering Projectile. Airbus in Columbus is developing the unmanned MQ-72C Lakota Connector based on its H145/UH-72 helicopter platform. RTX/Raytheon in Forest is a major defense manufacturing site that produces advanced radar, electronic warfare, and sensor systems for U.S. and allied military platforms. The GE Aerospace facility in Batesville recently expanded capacity to produce parts for military fighter jet and helicopter engines. Stark Aerospace in Columbus produces and supports missile systems and related components. Aurora Flight Sciences, a Boeing subsidiary in Columbus, produces components and assemblies for military aircraft and related systems. Northrop Grumman in Iuka produces critical components for launch vehicles such as the Antares, Pegasus, and Minotaur rockets. Lockheed Martin at its Stennis Space Center facility in Hancock County produces propulsion systems and related military equipment. While the Pentagon doubles down on its spending for expensive weapons systems, particularly to refill depleted inventories of defensive projectiles, it has begun to focus on “attributable autonomous systems” — linked but unmanned systems — as lower cost alternatives, e.g. cheap drones and directed energy. Using expensive missiles to down cheap drones, as we do to protect our bases and allies from Iran, does not make either strategic or economic sense in the long run. Military experts are now thinking to layer systems with lots of mass-produced, relatively inexpensive autonomous weapons and defenses at the base level – cheap drones, missiles and unmanned aircraft plus electronic warfare systems. Above that would be a less robust layer of inexpensive missiles. Above that would be a limited layer of exquisite, expensive weapons. Those Mississippi defense industries thriving on that top layer now will need to be ready to adapt to this shift. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” – Ecclesiastes 3:1. Crawford is an author and syndicated columnist from Jackson.