Avio USA, a subsidiary of Avio S.p.A, has selected ACMI Properties to design and plan its first solid rocket motor production facility in the United States. The project targets a potential investment in the U.S. industrial base to support the rapid increase in demand for solid rocket motors in the defense and aerospace industries.

Private investment is essential to fulfill the Defense Department’s priorities outlined in the National Defense Strategy. With the right conditions, emerging hardware technology companies hold the promise of delivering substantial returns on investment — potentially evolving into the next generation of government primes and industry leaders. Strengthening connections between government procurement and the investment community will foster a robust ecosystem where hardware technology companies can thrive.

While the Industry Ecosystems are new, they leverage aspects of highly successful concepts from the past. When manufacturing and R&D converge in a shared geographic location, synergies occur. ACMI’s approach stands out by shifting the responsibility for innovation, production, and distribution from individual companies to a shared tenancy model. This transition offers greater flexibility, reduces capital expenses, and fosters future innovation. It is an essential component for revitalizing American manufacturing in key sectors for national defense and economic prosperity.

The US innovation ecosystem is a vibrant cauldron. Harnessing its energy—and mitigating its risks—requires strategic, operational, and financial expertise as well as a high degree of collaboration. Although some nations rely on substantial government funding for technological innovation, as seen in the East Asian chip industry, the campus model leverages modest federal funds to gain a more sizable investment from aligned private capital sources. By taking advantage of these uniquely American, market-driven resources, ACMI is establishing new ways to efficiently transition critical technologies from laboratories to end users. This approach aims to rebuild the US industrial base organically by cultivating a dynamic, domestic defense manufacturing ecosystem.

ACMI Properties, a division of the American Center for Manufacturing and Innovation (ACMI), has announced it will spearhead the development and construction of a new industrial campus focused on munitions. The initiative is part of a $75 million Department of Defense (DoD) contract awarded to ACMI Federal to support the initial campus by the DoD’s Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Resilience (IBR) through its Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization (MCEIP) Directorate.

The American Center for Manufacturing & Innovation (ACMI) today announced Munitions Campus – Indiana. The project, a private-public partnership leveraging the Department of Defense (DOD)’s $75M Munitions Campus program award to ACMI and an estimated $300M of private capital for developing infrastructure, is an industrial real estate development to support scaling and innovation in munitions-related areas.

The Munitions Campus program was established through the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Resilience (IBR) through its Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization (MCEIP) Directorate.

NASA and the American Center for Manufacturing and Innovation (ACMI) signed an agreement Thursday, Feb. 29 to lease underutilized land in a 240-acre Exploration Park at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. ACMI will enable the development of facilities to enable commercial and defense space manufacturing.

The agreement is the second such public/private lease agreement to allow industry and academia to use NASA Johnson land to create facilities for a collaborative development environment that increases commercial access and enhances the United States’ commercial competitiveness in the space and aerospace industries.