US Patent 12,674,650 B1 — “Integrated Additive Manufacture (AM) of Explosive Payloads” — Raytheon Company, granted 7 July 2026. Source: United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), public domain. Front page showing CPC classifications, abstract, and warhead cross-section drawing sheets.

The Real Energetics Race Is Now in the Factory

Across 2025 and 2026, the most consequential moves in military energetics sit in how explosives are made and formulated, not in new molecules. Granted patents from Raytheon, the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, together with the United Kingdom plan for at least six new energetics factories, all point the same way. Process, internal architecture and scale-up now set the pace.

Technical Summary

An energetic material is a substance that stores chemical energy and releases it rapidly, the family that covers high explosives, propellants and pyrotechnics. A plastic-bonded explosive, or PBX, holds explosive crystals in a polymer matrix so the charge can be shaped and handled safely. For decades the headline question was which new molecule would beat the old workhorses such as RDX (Research Department Composition X, cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine) and HMX (High Melting Explosive, cyclotetramethylenetetranitramine). That is no longer where the interesting work concentrates. The patents granted over the past year, and the money now moving into plant, tell a different story about manufacturing and formulation.

Six themes run through the current filings and investments. Additive manufacture of complete or compositionally graded energetic components. Continuous and semi-continuous processing in place of traditional batch operations. Energetic or binderless polymer systems that stop the binder from diluting performance. Particle coatings that improve stability and processability. Better control of voids, crystal shape and internal defects. And scale-up facilities that fold in-process diagnostics and remote operation into pilot production. For anyone tracking the field through patent classifications, the most productive codes are C06B 21/00 for processing and shaping explosives, C06B 45/00 for structurally arranged compositions, and B33Y 70/00 for additive-manufacturing feedstocks.

Ten Developments Worth Tracking

The United Kingdom has named nine strategically important energetic materials, from RDX and HMX to ammonium perchlorate, and committed to at least six new factories, with construction of the first expected to begin in 2026. UK Ministry of Defence energetics programme, GOV.UK

Analysis of Effects

The additive-manufacture cluster is the clearest signal. Raytheon patent US 12,674,650, granted on 7 July 2026, covers printing energetic and non-energetic components together while keeping process temperatures bounded below and away from the onset temperature of the energetic fill, the point at which decomposition or accidental initiation begins. The prize is a complex, multi-material payload built with less assembly and faster design changes. TNO patent US 12,428,357, granted in September 2025, goes a step further into the material itself. By co-extruding at least two feeds into a multilayer filament and varying the relative feed rates during printing, it engineers a gradient of properties through the finished part rather than a single uniform charge. A published application, US 2025/0109079, adds an optically curable binder so material is cured only after it is laid down, which trims the waste and storage limits that come with conventional pre-mixed systems. That application is not yet a granted patent.

The binder and particle work is quieter but matters for ageing and integrity. India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation, or DRDO, is offering industry transfer of an energetic binder and its processing route, which the organisation says it has demonstrated at a 30 kilogram batch scale and built into warhead explosive formulations. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, or LLNL, is marketing a method that covalently crosslinks certain energetic molecules to reach mechanically robust material without a passive binder or plasticiser, a step toward binderless explosives, though the public material sits at technology readiness level 3 to 5 and does not establish production maturity. Lewtas Science and Technologies patent US 12,391,631, granted in August 2025, applies tackifier resins to cut plasticiser dependence, a fix for the migration and mechanical-integrity problems that dog aged charges. Forge Nano application US 2025/0188002 coats high-energy particles at the nanometre scale to improve moisture resistance and powder flow. Goodrich and Raytheon patent US 12,617,738 strips dissolved gas from uncured compositions so voids do not seed later defects. Underneath all of it, the extrusion-spheronization route to PBX granules and the LLNL Site 300 Pilot Plant show batch chemistry giving way to continuous flow. That plant links larger-scale synthesis with formulation into plastic-bonded explosives, and its Facility for Advanced Manufacturing of Energetics, or FAME, concentrates on additive manufacture, resonant acoustic mixing and real-time process diagnostics, a sign that advanced processing is moving past the laboratory bench.

Personnel and Safety Considerations

Most of these advances are process-safety stories as much as performance stories. Temperature control near the onset of decomposition, gas and void removal from uncured mixes, and tighter control of crystal morphology all bear directly on how predictably a charge ages and reacts, which is the ground that ammunition technicians, safety-case authors and qualification staff work on every day. Cured-after-deposition binders and continuous processing reduce the volume of sensitised material sitting in storage, and remote operation with in-process diagnostics cuts operator exposure at the pilot scale. Any change to a fill or binder is not free of consequence downstream. New formulations need requalification and fresh hazard-division assessment before they enter service, work carried out under Allied Ordnance Publication 7 (AOP-7) and the insensitive-munitions standard STANAG 4439, so a printed or regraded charge that looks attractive in the laboratory still has a long assurance path ahead of it. Nothing in this assessment describes device construction or disposal technique; the focus is industrial and scientific.

Data Gaps

Several claims rest on single or self-published sources and should be treated with care. The DRDO 30 kilogram batch figure is the organisation’s own statement in a technology-transfer document, not independently verified output. The LLNL crosslinking and Site 300 characterisations draw on laboratory marketing and a science-review article, so the additive-manufacturing, resonant-acoustic-mixing and diagnostics detail reflects the source’s own framing rather than confirmed pilot output; the associated synthesis pilot plant is described in open literature at a 1 to 2 kilogram scale. Three of the ten items, the light-cured binder, the Forge Nano coatings and, at the time of writing, some family members of the others, are applications rather than granted patents, which means claims may narrow before grant. A recent publication date does not prove a new invention: priority dates and patent-family histories should be checked before any item is treated as novel or as evidence of fielded capability.

Corrections & updates welcome. If you hold open-source data that refines or corrects any parameter in this article, please contact [email protected] citing the specific claim and your source. Verified corrections will be incorporated and credited in the revision history. AI-assisted technical assessment based on open-source material. Not a formal intelligence product.