Nearly every weapon, from small arms to missiles, depends on energetic materials, and the industrial base behind them still has gaps. Hudson Institute opened its "Chemistry of Combat: Rebuilding America's Energetics Base" event in Washington, DC on Tuesday, October 27 with two data points. A 2018 DoD review found roughly 300 single points of failure across the munitions industrial base. And CL-20 was invented in the US but never transitioned, while China has pursued it. The question for the afternoon: what has changed since Hudson's 2022 report?

Panel I: Can the US produce what the next war requires?

The first panel covered energetics treated as a commodity instead of critical chemicals, production moving offshore, boom-bust demand, and how to modernize government-owned plants that are really chemical plants. Dr. Chris McKenzie said leadership engaged once energetics were reframed as "critical chemicals." Much of the production went offshore, largely to China, because defense demand alone can't sustain it. Kristy Klein said the last four to five years brought more change than the rest of her career, but not enough, and that early-stage R&D needs more money. Mike Ervin of BAE Systems pointed out that Holston and Radford are chemical plants that happen to make energetics. Modernizing them means utilities, steam, water and permits, not just new buildings. The fixes discussed for the boom-bust cycle were multi-year buys, single-award modernization, commercial demand to carry plants through troughs, and capacity to prototype new processes like resonant acoustic mixing and continuous flow.

Panel II: Building the next energetics base

The second panel covered new entrants, modular and distributed manufacturing, commercial demand, and how private capital can underwrite the space. Maj. Gen. Joe Kunkel of DIU called this a generational change, since most of today's weapons and their energetics are Reagan-era. Sean Hunt of Solugen argued for separating chemical manufacturing from energetics manufacturing: "ship a chemical, don't ship an explosive." Kevin Capozzoli described Critical Materials Group's modular, vertically integrated approach. I joined this panel for Supply Energetics to talk nitrate esters. Some energetics, like double base, have commercial demand that can carry a plant through defense troughs. High explosives mostly don't. On capital, the panel discussed early innings for venture, a CHIPS Act-style mechanism for energetics, government publishing the addressable market so private capital can underwrite it, and Drone Dominance pushing more US-made content.

Panel III: From molecule to munition

Qualification is the bottleneck. Energetic, component and system quals are separate, and each service runs its own process. Alexander Woods said JETO is working to align the services on common test programs and to use modeling and simulation to decide which tests matter when. Brig. Gen. Jason Bartolomei (Ret.) offered a simple test: capable, scalable, adaptable, and precise about the problem. Bob Wardle's CL-20 history was the cautionary tale. It was made in 1987 with thousands of pages of data and lost its pull when the Cold War ended. New materials need an operational pull. Arming and qualification rules built for missiles also need a fresh look for drones, and Congress may need to clarify what is statutory and what is decades of accumulated process.

The takeaway

The energetics base is a chemistry problem as much as a munitions problem. Fixing it takes steady demand signals, faster qualification, and room for new entrants and new processes alongside the legacy plants.

Thank you to Nadia Schadlow, Ashlynn Parker and the Hudson team, Madeline Hart, and my fellow panelists for a serious conversation. The full recording is available on Hudson Institute's YouTube channel.