Orbital Composites, a Campbell, CA-based advanced manufacturing company, announced a $1.9 million Tactical Funding Increase (TACFI) contract award from SpaceWERX, the innovation arm of the U.S. Space Force. The contract funds continued development of Orbital's robotic additive manufacturing (AM) platform for extreme-environment materials — 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 reflects growing recognition across 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 the 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. 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. We are grateful to our SpaceWERX, AFWERX and AFRL partners for their leadership in making that possible." commented Amolak Badesha, Chief Executive Officer, Orbital Composites.
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, cheaper, 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. 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." commented Cole Nielsen-Cole, Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Orbital Composites.
Orbital is working with defense prime contractors, U.S. government program offices, and commercial space and energy providers to scale qualification and production. The company is investing in manufacturing capacity, program qualification, and the physical AI systems that underpin its autonomous production vision. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Air Force, the Department of War, or the U.S. government.
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