Bayou Metals, a manufacturing partner of defense shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), has stood up a dedicated production line for the Romulus uncrewed surface vessel (USV), a move intended to compress delivery timelines and increase throughput for the US Navy’s growing unmanned maritime program.

The production line is located in Slidell, Louisiana. Bayou Metals is also serving as a strategic marine-grade aluminum supplier to the HII. 

A purpose-built line for an uncrewed hull

Rather than routing Romulus components through a generalized fabrication workflow, Bayou Metals configured a dedicated manufacturing line specifically for the vessel’s metalwork and structural assemblies. This single-product-line architecture reduces setup changeover time and allows process engineers to optimize fixturing, weld sequencing, and quality inspection around a single repeating geometry—a standard lean-manufacturing approach when volume and schedule pressure justify the capital allocation.

The Romulus family of USVs is designed for a wide range of mission sets, including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), mine countermeasures, strike operations, and counter-unmanned systems. It can also serve as a mother-ship to launch and recover unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It is centered on HII’s Odyssey autonomy software suite and open systems architecture.

HII has been developing the platform as part of the broader US Navy push to field autonomous and semi-autonomous surface vessels capable of operating alongside crewed combatants. Romulus is being developed in partnership with Breaux Brothers, Shield AI, Beier Integrated Systems, and Incat Crowther. 

Supply chain structure for unmanned programs

The Bayou Metals arrangement illustrates how prime defense contractors are structuring supply chains for unmanned platforms differently from traditional crewed ships. Because USVs are expected to be procured in larger numbers at lower per-unit cost than destroyers or frigates, the production economics demand a more industrialized approach from tier-one and tier-two suppliers early in the program lifecycle — before the Navy has necessarily committed to a high-rate production contract.

HII’s unmanned systems portfolio

HII has been expanding its unmanned and autonomous systems work through its Mission Technologies division, positioning itself beyond traditional nuclear shipbuilding. The Romulus program sits within that strategic push.

By anchoring a dedicated supplier line, HII is attempting to demonstrate production readiness — a factor the Navy weighs when evaluating whether a program can transition from development and low-rate initial production to full-rate procurement.

Production readiness reviews assess not just the prime contractor’s internal capacity but the depth and reliability of the supplier base. A named, dedicated manufacturing line at a partner facility is a tangible data point in that evaluation criteria. 

What comes next

In addition to the vessel currently under construction, four additional Romulus 151 vessels will be built by Breaux Brothers Enterprises in Louisiana. This effort for HII also supports the expansion of the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base by growing Gulf Coast manufacturing capacity.

The United States is working to rebuild its domestic uranium enrichment infrastructure for its defense programs, through a project known as DUECE (Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment).

It began in 2016, with an objective to develop and demonstrate the next generation of gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment. DUCE is based out of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

The project is strategically significant as it aims to provide a domestic source of highly enriched uranium for powering US nuclear submarines as well as provide tritium for the US nuclear weapons stockpile.

The US imports low enriched uranium for its commercial power reactors but international treaties prohibit the use of imported uranium for military applications.

A capability gap decades in the making

The US once operated three large gaseous diffusion plants for uranium enrichment. These were located in Oak Ridge Tennessee, Portsmouth Ohio, and Paducah, Kentucky (which remained operational until 2013).

These facilities consumed enormous amounts of electricity and were gradually shut down as cheaper, more energy-efficient centrifuge-based enrichment became the global standard.

The US was also developing centrifuge technology at Oak Ridge to eventually replace gaseous diffusion. But events like the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster, the end of the Cold War, and the decrease in global demand for enriched uranium halted plans for commercializing the gas centrifuge technology.

The enrichment process

Gas centrifuge enrichment works by spinning uranium hexafluoride gas at high speed; the heavier uranium-238 isotope migrates toward the outer wall while the lighter, fissile uranium-235 concentrates near the axis. Cascades of thousands of centrifuges connected in series are required to achieve commercially useful enrichment levels.

In general the enrichment levels of uranium fuel in US nuclear submarines is 93-97%. These enable high power density and long-lived reactor cores. It also facilitates in building more compact naval reactors.

What DUECE is building

Currently the project is focused on building a pilot plant in collaboration with BWX Technologies (BWXT). BWXT built a Centrifuge Manufacturing Development Facility to support the pilot plant, it commenced operations in January 2026. The plant will use centrifuges based on the ORNL’s Generation 1 centrifuge design. Currently the Generation 1 design is deployed in a laboratory cascade at ORNL.

It commenced operations on June 1, 2026. Additional deployments of the Generation 1 machine at ORNL are planned through the early 2030s to mature the TRL (Technology Readiness Level) of the design in time for the pilot plant deployment.

Michael Whedbee ORNL’s technical project manager for DUECE said “ The DUECE project plans to use the developments in computing and in materials to continue to advance and develop new potential designs and capabilities in the centrifuge arena.”

Eventually the technical and operational learnings from the pilot plant will be utilized in building a follow on commercial scale facility in the 2040s. The DUECE project fits within a broader federal push to secure the nuclear fuel cycle, which includes funding for domestic uranium mining, conversion, enrichment and reprocessing.

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions is ramping up manufacturing capacity for its Spartan family of small gas turbine engines, responding to increased procurement activity across missile programs and loitering munition platforms.

The company confirmed the production expansion through an official press release.

What the Spartan engine is and why it matters now

The Spartan family comprises of compact turbojet engines designed specifically for expendable and attritable platforms — systems built to be used once or with minimal recovery expectation. These engines sit in a performance envelope suited to subsonic cruise missiles, decoy drones, and one-way attack munitions, where cost-per-unit and production throughput matter as much as raw performance.

Steve Fendley, President of Kratos Unmanned Systems Division said “As the Department of War focuses on rebuilding critical missile inventories and increasing affordable precision-strike capacity, the need for scalable, high-performance but low-cost propulsion systems has never been greater.”

He further said “Kratos is investing today to ensure our customers have access to affordable, reliable, American-made propulsion systems that can be delivered at the speed and scale required by the modern threat environment.”

Loitering munitions, sometimes referred to as kamikaze drones, have moved from niche battlefield tools to standard procurement items for multiple NATO and allied militaries following their documented use in conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. That shift has created a supply pressure on propulsion systems, which have historically been a bottleneck in scaling expendable platform production.

Production expansion details

Kratos states that it will produce 3000 engines in 2027. The Spartan line covers multiple thrust classes (ranging from 30 lb to 200 lb at sea level), allowing a single manufacturing infrastructure to serve different platform weight categories without requiring entirely separate production lines.

The vertical integration Kratos maintains over its propulsion systems — designing and building engines in-house — gives the company tighter control over delivery schedules, a factor that has become a competitive differentiator as defense primes face long lead times on subcomponents.

This investment by the company is strategically aimed at supporting US Department of War`s priorities to replenish missile inventories, expand production capacity for precision-strike weapons, and deliver affordable mass capabilities across the US armed forces

Engineering tradeoffs in expendable propulsion

Designing a gas turbine for an expendable platform involves deliberate compromises. Engineers typically target a service life measured in hours rather than thousands of flight cycles, which allows for reduced material grades in certain hot-section components (cooled by the onboard fuel in Spartan engines) and simplified maintenance architecture.

Supply chain and geopolitical context

Western defense planners have grown increasingly focused on magazine depth — the ability to sustain munitions expenditure over a prolonged conflict — following assessments of consumption rates in Ukraine. Loitering munitions and cruise missiles consume propulsion units at a pace that peacetime production lines were not sized to support. Kratos quotes an annual production capacity of 10,000 Spartan engines probably indicating towards a buffer surge production capability.

According to the company these engines are designed and manufactured in the United States at Oxford, Michigan, with all parts and components sourced from U.S. companies.

Rare Element Resources (RER) has issued a project update on its Bear Lodge rare earth element deposit in Wyoming, one of the largest known carbonatite-hosted rare earth deposits in North America. According to the update the environmental review and mining site permitting is in progress and is anticipated to be completed by March 2028. The update also states that the demonstration rare earth element (REE) separation plant will commence operations by late summer 2026. It is scheduled to run for up to 12 months and will produce an up to 10 tons of neodymium-praseodymium (Nd/Pr) oxide.

The mineral deposits at Bear Lodge contain both the magnet rare earth materials neodymium, praseodymium, samarium and terbium as well as cerium (Ce), lanthanum, yttrium, gadolinium, europium and dysprosium. All these elements are on the U.S. Geological Survey`s list of 60 critical minerals. The minerals on the list have been identified as critical due to their role in national security or economic development and by their risk of supply chain disruption.

The project details

The vertically integrated Bear Lodge Rare Earth Project encompasses mining of rare earth element (REE) ore which will become feed material for a state-of-the-art commercial processing facility. The facility will produce high-purity separated neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) oxide using the company`s patented, environmentally friendly technology. It will be designed as a zero discharge facility and will located approximately 40 miles from the mining area.

The full scale commercial processing facility will be built based on the operational, economic, and engineering data derived from the demonstration plant. This US Nuclear Regulatory Commission certified plant is located at Upton, Wyoming.

Ken Mushinski, President and CEO of RER said “The primary objective of a Demonstration Plant is to systematically uncover and resolve mechanical and operational challenges before scaling to a commercial facility”.

He further said “By fine-tuning our primary processing circuit and resolving these filtration inefficiencies now, we are effectively de-risking our commercial trajectory. Once this front-end optimization is complete, the primary circuit will continuously feed our completed separation circuits to yield high-purity NdPr.

The separation process

According to the company the proprietary separation process involves four steps. It commences by crushing and screening of the feed sample to 1mm size followed by counter-current leaching and selective precipitation, to chemical digestion and solvent extraction, and finally to REE separation and refining.

The final REE separation and refining process involves multiple steps, these remove the Nd/Pr (at greater than 99.5 percent purity) as well as samarium, europium, gadolinium, lanthanum and heavy rare earth concentrates.

The company states that it has done extensive laboratory bench-scale and pilot plant testing on metallurgical processes to recover saleable rare earth products and has been granted two patents on its metallurgical processing. These involve removal of thorium from REE containing acidic solution, as well as the selective extraction of REEs using oxalic acid. These patented processes have been further advanced in collaboration with General Atomics, the company’s majority shareholder.

Supply chain context

The United States currently has limited domestic capacity for separating and processing rare earth elements into refined oxides or metals. Mountain Pass in California remains the only operating rare earth mine in the country, though its concentrate is largely shipped to China for separation (which accounts for 91 percent of the global refined output). Projects like Bear Lodge are positioned as potential contributors to a more complete domestic supply chain, from ore to separated material.

Although permitting timelines, metallurgical recovery rates, and sustained financing are the primary variables that determine whether a deposit moves from resource estimate to operating mine.

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