Explosion at Northrop Grumman Missile Factory in the United States

The building of the Northrop Grumman factory, which produced intercontinental ballistic missiles, was completely destroyed in the explosion.

Local outlets KSL News Utah and Fox13 published footage from the scene.

The explosion, which occurred on April 16 at 7:38 a.m., destroyed a building at the Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems plant in Promontory, Utah, where the company manufactures solid rocket motors.

“An incident occurred this morning in one of the buildings at our plant in Promontory. We are working to determine the cause. Employees who were working in or near the building today are accounted for and have no serious injuries,” the company stated.

Northrop Grumman did not comment on the cause of the explosion or the production status, but footage released by local TV stations shows extensive destruction.

Before being acquired by Northrop Grumman in 2018, the Promontory plant was owned by Orbital ATK. It specializes in producing solid rocket motors and is a leading player in this market, fulfilling defense contracts for the U.S. Air Force, NASA, and commercial aerospace companies.

The American publication Air and Space Forces suggests that the plant’s facilities may have been involved in producing the new LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile. The U.S. planned to purchase 659 such missiles.

The Promontory plant was used to conduct test firings of the Sentinel missile engines. Specifically, on March 6, static tests of the first-stage solid rocket motor were conducted on its premises.

Northrop Grumman is also working on a joint U.S.-Japan project for the long-range interceptor of hypersonic missiles, the Interceptor Glide Phase, to provide regional missile defense.

As part of the program, Northrop has taken on the development of, among other components, the solid rocket motor for the second stage and the booster.

After winning the contract over Raytheon, Northrop Grumman was set to complete flight testing of the prototype and demonstrate its capabilities at hypersonic speeds.

Militarnyi previously reported that Northrop Grumman plans to double the production of rocket engines for GMLRS missiles. For the past four years, the company has been supplying from 5,000 to 6,000 engines for GMLRS (Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System) missiles yearly.