Acting Army secretary tours Pine Bluff Arsenal, Walmart and UA labs as Arkansas defense plants ramp up

PINE BLUFF — The Army’s top civilian spent Thursday and Friday in Arkansas, walking the production floors at Pine Bluff Arsenal with both of the state’s U.S. senators, sitting in on Walmart’s global security operations center in Bentonville and touring research labs at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle’s two-day trip capped a month in which defense contractors opened a new rocket motor plant in Camden, delivered the first Iron Dome interceptors ever built in the United States, and a South Korean company planning a $2.2 billion munitions campus at Pine Bluff joined his tour.

The Army released an account of the visit and eight photos on Sunday.

“The forward momentum we saw across Arkansas wouldn’t be possible without the leadership and advocacy of President Trump, Secretary of War Hegseth, Senator Boozman, Senator Cotton, Congressman Womack, and the entire Arkansas delegation,” Telle said in the Army’s release. “They are backing our warfighters with the resourcing and legislative firepower needed to modernize our organic industrial base and supercharge our installations.”

Pine Bluff Arsenal

Telle’s first stop Thursday, Oct. 29, was Pine Bluff Arsenal, the 15,000-acre Army post in Jefferson County that has made munitions for more than 85 years. According to the Army, the arsenal is the nation’s only producer of white phosphorus munitions and a primary manufacturer of tactical smoke, pyrotechnics and illumination rounds. It also makes chemical and biological defense equipment, protective filters and military textiles, and it has more than 500 buildings and more than a million square feet of explosive storage.

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Sen. Tom Cotton said on Deltaplex Radio Friday morning that he and Sen. John Boozman made the tour with Telle and with representatives of the South Korean defense company Hanwha, TriArk Radio reported. Cotton said talks are continuing about bringing more defense manufacturing to the arsenal.

Hanwha Defense USA announced in September that it will build a $2.2 billion manufacturing campus at the arsenal to make 155mm artillery propellant charges and base bleed units, creating close to 400 jobs over seven years. The company opened an administrative headquarters on the post that day. It is leasing arsenal land the Army considers underused, part of a push the arsenal calls ARSENAL READY that aims to turn the post into a “multi-capability defense industrial park” with private partners, the Army said.

The arsenal’s future was not always this certain. In 2025 Cotton, Boozman and U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman pushed back publicly on Army plans that could have downsized the post.

“Pine Bluff Arsenal is ‘America’s Arsenal,'” Telle said in the release. “What the workforce is doing here to shed legacy acquisition models and transition into a continuously operating, modernized hub is fundamental to Army lethality and our continued dominance on the battlefield.”

Walmart’s security center

From Pine Bluff, Telle went to Walmart’s corporate headquarters in Bentonville. There he met company leaders and visited the retailer’s Global Security Operations Center, a room built around a wall-sized display of maps.

The Army said the discussion covered how a global company keeps a real-time picture of its operations and moves supplies around natural disasters, security problems and other disruptions, lessons the Army wants for its own supply lines. Walmart supplied a stock photo of the center for the Army’s release.

University of Arkansas

Telle finished the trip Friday, Oct. 30, at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. At the university’s Engineering Research Center, he met researchers from the College of Engineering and the Walton College of Business about training future supply-chain leaders and using university research on military sustainment problems.

He toured the Multi-User Silicon Carbide Research and Fabrication Facility, known as MUSiC, a national lab for making silicon carbide computer chips used in power electronics and defense systems. The last stop was the Civil Engineering Research and Education Center, where the group watched a large-scale structural test and heard about research into 3D-printed structures and fast-setting cement.

“If we are going to become more efficient, effective, and ultimately dominant on the battlefield, we must fully harness what we already have in America, which is the amazing spirit of ingenuity in our entrepreneurial capital markets and world-class research institutions,” Telle said. “We see that on full display here in Northwest Arkansas.”

A busy month for Arkansas defense plants

Telle’s visit followed a string of defense announcements in south Arkansas, most of them at the Highland Industrial Park in East Camden.

L3Harris rocket motor plant, Camden, Oct. 20. L3Harris Technologies opened its new “Arsenal of Freedom” solid rocket motor plant, which the company says will double its current capacity, with room to grow. The plant will make the motors for the Army’s Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, the GMLRS rockets fired from HIMARS launchers. It was paid for in part through a $216 million Defense Production Act agreement the company signed with the Pentagon in 2023 to boost production of Javelin, Stinger and GMLRS motors. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the company will “soon begin producing motors” there. L3Harris is also building its Arkansas Advanced Propulsion Facilities campus and two plants for Patriot PAC-3 missile motors at the same Camden site.

First U.S.-built Iron Dome interceptors, East Camden, Oct. 7. R2S, a joint venture of RTX’s Raytheon and Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, delivered its first Tamir missiles from the plant it opened in November 2025. Tamir is the interceptor fired by Israel’s Iron Dome, and the company said it is the first time the missiles have been made in the United States. The plant is a $63 million investment with up to 60 jobs, up from the $33 million and 30 jobs announced in 2023, and it will also build SkyHunter, the U.S. version, for the Marine Corps.

Patriot production. Lockheed Martin’s Camden plant is the only place in the world that finishes PAC-3 Patriot interceptors. In July the Army turned Lockheed’s contract into a seven-year deal worth $58.62 billion, and the company plans to grow its Camden workforce from about 1,200 to 1,850 and raise output to 2,000 interceptors a year by 2030, as ABN reported in August. In September, CBS reported that the war with Iran has drawn down Patriot stocks, and Lockheed’s missile chief said the company is adding shifts and automation in Camden.

Foreign F-35 pilots, Fort Smith. The first German F-35 landed at Ebbing Air National Guard Base on Oct. 5. Ebbing is the Air Force’s training center for allied pilots flying the jet. Cotton told Deltaplex Radio he visited Ebbing last week with a Polish diplomat.

Not all the new plants are defense plants. On Oct. 30, the same day Telle was in Fayetteville, U.S. Steel broke ground on a $1.9 billion iron plant at its Big River Steel Works in Osceola, a project the company says will bring about 200 permanent jobs to Mississippi County.

Aerospace and defense is Arkansas’ No. 1 export industry, according to the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, and the sector employs more than 8,000 people in the state.

“From the vital production lines at Pine Bluff, to the global distribution engine of Walmart, to the world-class logistics and materials research at the University of Arkansas, this visit demonstrated the total national ecosystem required to secure our nation,” Telle said.