$1.25 Billion Iron Dome Contract Spurs Major Expansion at Camden’s Defense Hub

EAST CAMDEN, AR – Dec. 4, 2025 – The strategic landscape of Arkansas’s defense industry continues to boom with the establishment of a new, state-of-the-art facility in the Highland Industrial Park that includes the Israel-based developer of the Iron Dome.

Just ahead of Thanksgiving, a joint venture between U.S.-based defense giant RTX and Hafia, Israel-based Rafael Protection Systems (R2S) secured a major $1.25 billion contract to produce interceptor missiles in south Arkansas for the Iron Dome Weapon System

R2S, a manufacturing company formed by defense giant RTX (formerly Raytheon) and Rafael will use the new East Camden facility to build the Iron Dome’s Tamir interceptor and its U.S. variant, the SkyHunter Interceptor. Rafael is the original developer of the Iron Dome, a system that has fundamentally changed air defense worldwide and protected Israel from aerial and other short-range missile attacks.

The new Camden facility represents a total investment of approximately $63 million and is expected to create up to 60 new jobs in the region.

“This is the first production contract for the R2S joint venture and a major milestone for both Raytheon and Rafael,” said R2S CEO Jonathan Casey. “The new Camden site is the first all-up-round production facility in the U.S. to manufacture Tamir and SkyHunter missiles.”

Huckabee-Israel Connection

Aerospace and defense companies like R2S choose Arkansas for a reason: we have a great workforce, low cost of living, an easy regulatory environment – and aren’t apologetic about serving as the arsenal of democracy for America and our allies,” said Gov Sanders. “I had the chance to deepen our state’s relationship with R2S, first at the Paris Air Show in 2023, then at this site’s groundbreaking in 2024, and later in Israel this past summer, and I’m proud of the partnership the community of Camden and the state of Arkansas have built with this great company.”

Notwithstanding Gov. Sanders trip to the Paris Air Show, the multibillion-dollar deal likely benefited from the current governor’s relationship with her father, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, who now serves as the 29th U.S. Ambassador to Isreal.

Only days after winning the Nov. 4 election, then-President-elect Donald Trump nominated the elder Huckabee to lead the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, stating that the former Arkansas governor would “bring peace to the Middle East. Huckabee was later confirmed to the post by the U.S. Senate in April, where he arrived in Israel just ahead of the week-long Passover holiday.

Operational in Israel since 2011, the Iron Dome has repeatedly proven its effectiveness in combat, intercepting thousands of threats with a success rate exceeding 95%. Its core capability is countering threats such as rockets, artillery, mortars, cruise missiles, and unmanned aircraft.

The acceleration of production in Camden is part of an initiative to meet high demand, including supplying Tamir missiles to Israel and supporting the U.S. Marine Corps’ Medium-Range Intercept Capability (MRIC) program with the SkyHunter variant.

Camden Solidifies Defense Corridor Status

The arrival of the R2S production facility also further cements Camden’s Highland Industrial Park as one of the nation’s most vital defense manufacturing clusters. This unique location is now home to a formidable lineup of major global defense contractors.

With this expansion, the park now hosts significant operations for several global defense giants, including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon (RTX), Rafael (via R2S), L3 Harris, and General Dynamics. These companies form one of the most potent and growing economic and strategic defense corridors in U.S.

Earlier in November, L3Harris and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders joined state and local leaders to break ground on the Arkansas Advanced Propulsion Facilities (AAPF), an extensive solid rocket motor (SRM) production campus partly funded by a $215.6M cooperative agreement signed in 2023 with the Department of Defense to expand and modernize facilities to support increased production of SRMs. 

L3 Harris solid rocket motor manufacturing site in Camden, which employs over 1200 workers, is adding 230,000 square feet of manufacturing and office space to the broader 2,000-acre Camden site, bringing total manufacturing square footage to more than 1.5 million. Program-agnostic equipment and buildings will also allow the company to rapidly change production based on current demand and quickly adapt to evolving customer needs.

The campus will include more than 20 buildings across 110 acres at the company’s Camden site and is expected to increase large solid rocket motor manufacturing capacity six-fold. The new facilities will specialize in producing medium and large rocket motors critical for tactical and air defense missiles, missile defense targets, interceptors and hypersonic vehicles, and emerging missile defense needs.

“This is a generational project and investment, demonstrating L3Harris’ role in unleashing America’s ‘Arsenal of Freedom,’” said L3 Harris CEO Christopher Kubasik. “Together with the state of Arkansas, we are adding capability that will protect our nation and allies, deter would-be aggressors and strengthen the U.S. defense industrial base.”

South Arkansas Economic Development – Lithium

Camden and South Arkansas are also poised to benefit from the Pentagon’s unprecedented investment in lithium and other rare-earth elements and technologies. Following China’s move in April to restrict exports of key rare-earth elements, the United States is accelerating its push for rare-earth magnet independence. In July, the Pentagon and Las Vegas-based MP Materials Corp., the largest domestic rare-earth producer, announced a “transformational” partnership to “drastically” build out the nation’s rare-earth magnet supply chain.

Rare-earth minerals include 17 elements on the periodic table, specifically 15 lanthanides, yttrium, and scandium. The rare-earth supply chain typically includes mining, processing, and fabricating finished goods such as magnets.

According to industry experts and leading rare-earth executives, despite having abundant reserves and the second-largest critical elements mine in the world, the United States lacks the necessary infrastructure to process the metals required for producing magnets used in various defense and commercial applications.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), China has a virtual monopoly on the extraction and refining of all rare-earth magnets, controlling 61 percent of production and 92 percent of processing.

In 2024, China supplied about 70 percent of America’s rare-earth needs, although the estimated value ($170 million) decreased by 11 percent from $186 million in 2023, according to a January report by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

China’s dominance in rare earths is also a key sticking point in President Trump’s ongoing tariff war with the Chinese superpower. After taking office nearly a year ago, Trump administration immediately announced he was accelerating the DOD’s goal of developing domestic supply chains to ensure continued access to the rare-earth materials necessary for manufacturing the permanent magnets used in critical U.S. military weapons systems and commercial applications.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in April that the DOD is reviewing all 72 active major defense acquisition programs, including a key Biden-era program that invested millions of dollars in expanding the U.S. rare-earth supply chain, including an initial $45 million cash advance to MP Materials in early 2022 to jumpstart the nation’s lone integrated rare-earth mine and oxide production facility.

Although lithium is not one of 17 rare earth elements, it is one of the critical minerals necessary for the production of large-capacity batteries and other key processes in the U.S. defense and manufacturing supply chain. In the past year, ExxonMobil and Chevron, the nation’s two largest oil conglomerates, announced multi-billion dollar plans to invest and develop commercial-scale lithium in south Arkansas’s Smackover Foundation.

According to an October 2024 report by the U.S. Geological Survey, in coordination with the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment, 5 and 19 million estimated tons of unproduced lithium reserves lie beneath this formation. This makes it a key area for potential lithium extraction and a focus of the current industry developments.

“If commercially recoverable, the amount of lithium present would meet projected 2030 world demand for lithium in car batteries nine times over,” the report states.