Good morning. Today's issue starts in Camden, Arkansas, where the missile boom is turning a small pine-belt town into a workforce and production test case. Also inside: radios turning into drone sensors, F-35s getting electronic-warfare kits, Utah lithium moving toward commercial scale, and AI data centers still buying hard backup power.
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The Lead
Camden, Arkansas is becoming a live test of how fast America can turn missile demand into factory labor.
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Camden, a southern Arkansas town of roughly 10,000 people, has been channeling residents into defense manufacturing since the Pentagon's urgent munitions push after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The town already has the bones for it. Lockheed Martin says its Camden Operations site spans more than 2.2M square feet across 2,400 acres in Highland Industrial Park, and L3Harris calls Camden its solid-rocket-motor center of excellence, producing motors for systems such as PAC-3, GMLRS, ATACMS, THAAD, and hypersonics.
The policy money is now walking into the same supply chain. On Friday, the Department of War announced another $27.3M DPA Title III investment for solid rocket motor safety-device production, bringing the broader package to $191M across nine investments since December 2024.
That is the missile boom at local resolution: industrial parks, technical colleges, primes, suppliers, energetics, safety devices, and workers who have to be trained into jobs where quality is the production rate.
Defense & Space
DataShapes AI partnered with L3Harris on Wraith Shield, turning fielded tactical radios into AI-enabled RF sensors and counter-drone disruption nodes.
Lockheed Martin received a $991.1M Navy order for 432 F-35 material modification kits tied to electronic-warfare modernization and related capability upgrades.
Northrop Grumman won a $398M Space Systems Command contract for a SATCOM space vehicle with launch and on-orbit support through 2030.
Energy & Materials
EnergyX and Compass Minerals signed an agreement to advance a Utah direct-lithium-extraction facility targeting up to 30,000 tons of annual commercial capacity.
PJM said 811 new generation projects representing 220 GW applied under its reformed interconnection process.
Rehlko secured another 1.7 GW of backup-power orders tied to hyperscale data-center growth.
Manufacturing & Infrastructure
QuesTek was selected by NASA for an Ignite SBIR Phase I award to develop computational tools for reliable microgravity manufacturing.
International Paper acquired a Dover, Delaware converting facility from Delmarva Corrugated Packaging to expand its East Coast packaging footprint.
Air Products was selected to expand industrial gas supply for Samsung Electronics' next-generation semiconductor fab in South Korea.
Dealbook
Arkeus raised an $18M Series A to scale AI sensing systems and manufacturing capability across the U.S., Australia, and Europe.
Rocsys unveiled a multi-bay hands-free charging system for autonomous EV depots and raised a $13M Series A extension.
Back Thursday.
