Boeing [BA] broke ground on a new expansion facility to ultimately increase production of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) seekers at its Huntsville, Ala., factory, the company said on Nov. 13.
The expansion will be 35,000 square feet and allow the company to increase annual production of the seekers by more than 30 percent, Boeing said. It expects the new facility to be operational by early 2027.
The seeker is a core piece of the overall missile system that lets it find and track threats to intercept, providing guidance data to the interceptor and used by the Patriot defense system.
“The PAC-3 seeker is a critical air and missile defense capability, and this site expansion will allow us to significantly ramp up production to support the U.S. military, allies and international partners who rely on it,” Debbie Barnett, vice president of Strategic Missile & Defense Systems and Boeing Huntsville site leader, said in a statement.
The company boasted that since 2010 it has invested over $100 million to improve its Huntsville facilities in support of PAC-3. Earlier in 2023, it opened a new 9,000 square-foot expansion to its Huntsville Electronics Center of Excellence, which produces some “essential hardware” for both the PAC-3 seekers and other Boeing systems.
The company also noted it recently delivered the 5,000th PAC-3 seeker.
While the company was unwilling to provide current production rates, a spokesman confirmed to Defense Daily that Boeing expects production using the new facility to ramp up quickly to use its full potential in the short term.
“The expanded facility will be instrumental in enabling Boeing to deliver more seekers to meet increasing air and missile defense needs well into the future,” Boeing spokesman Josh Roth told Defense Daily.
Boeing produces the PAC-3 seekers as a subcontractor to the interceptor prime contractor Lockheed Martin [LMT] and has worked on this program for more than 20 years.
The company said since 2021 it has received over $2 billion in contracts to produce the PAC-3 seekers to develop the next-generation seeker that includes digital engineering.