The news release in May was the kind that has now become common in south Arkansas. HIMARS launchers, which are assembled near Camden by Lockheed Martin, had been delivered to Poland.
According to the release: "Subsequent shipments of HIMARS will be delivered this year resulting in additional capabilities for Poland."
"The combat-proven HIMARS will provide credible deterrence against aggression and significantly increase capability of the Polish armed forces and their NATO allies," Jay Price, a vice president of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said.
The war in Ukraine and the use of weapons assembled in south Arkansas have put a spotlight on the defense industry in these pine woods. As noted in Wednesday's column, almost 3,000 people are employed by defense companies in the Camden area, and hundreds of additional jobs soon will be available.
As NATO allies have provided weapons to Ukraine, they have depleted their inventories and now must restock. That need, combined with increased tensions not only with Russia but also with China, likely will ensure that the resulting economic surge will continue for years to come.
One of the writers to visit the Camden area was Elliot Ackerman of The Atlantic. The resulting story ran under this headline: "The Arsenal of Democracy is Reopening for Business."
"When I visited the Lockheed Martin plant in southern Arkansas at the end of February, I found it humming with activity," Ackerman wrote. "The factory and its workers are a key component of America's arsenal of democracy.
"The dollars the Biden administration is spending to provide abundant military aid for Ukraine are creating jobs here and in other industrial towns throughout the United States.
"But watching the workers on the assembly line also underscored the extent of the challenge ahead. After decades of atrophy and neglect, America's defense industries are struggling to meet the sudden surge in demand. ... It's at factories like this one where the war in Ukraine, and conflicts to come, may be lost or won."
James Lee Silliman, who heads the Ouachita Partnership for Economic Development, said: "We like to refer to ourselves as the defense industry center of excellence for Arkansas. Camden has been proud of our contributions to the defense of our nation since the Shumaker Naval Ammunition Depot was constructed in the 1940s."
"Dozens of welders and assemblers work the production line," Ackerman wrote. "They crawl over mobile rocket launchers in various stages of assembly, the parts laid out like so many toy-model kits. The launchers come in two variants: the tracked M270 and the newer High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), which is wheeled.
"The M270 program is a public-private partnership in which Lockheed refurbishes older models stored at Red River Army Depot in northeastern Texas so they can be shipped to our allies, whereas the HIMARS are built from the ground up in Lockheed's Camden facility."
Lockheed Martin had stopped manufacturing HIMARS until an order from the United Arab Emirates for 12 launchers was received in 2017. Demand has grown since then. NATO has sent Ukraine at least 20 HIMARS and 10 M270s. Congress awarded Lockheed Martin $631 million in contracts last year for HIMARS.
(DROP CAP) The Arkansas facility can produce 48 refurbished M270s and 48 new HIMARS annually. The HIMARS number will double to 96 by the third quarter of 2025.
"Although certain steps are automated, production remains manpower intensive," Ackerman wrote. "One part on the HIMARS chassis requires an assembler to drill 1,300 precision holes by hand. Increasing the rate of production isn't as simple as flipping a switch.
"Lockheed's Camden facility, which sits on 2,427 acres, has significant potential for growth. ... It is located on the larger Highland Industrial Park, whose 18,500 acres were originally the Shumaker Naval Ammunition Depot, built during World War II to manufacture and store torpedoes, bombs and other munitions. The Navy selected East Camden to produce and store large quantities of munitions because of its remote location, and it remains remote today.
"The non-defense-related economy around East Camden has remained slow to develop, but executives at Lockheed see that changing. In the past four years, their workforce in Camden has doubled to more than 1,000 employees. Highland Industrial Park also counts General Dynamics, Raytheon and Aerojet Rocketdyne as tenants."
Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.