A new company developing hypersonic missiles is considering setting up shop in Southern Arizona.
While not yet publicly announced, Sen. Mark Kelly, the Arizona Commerce Authority, and Pima County’s Department of Economic Development have all been working to lure an upstart aerospace defense company to Pima County.
The company, Castelion Corporation, was founded in 2022, and is based in California.
Promising low-cost testing, rapid scaling, and affordable mass production of hypersonic missiles, Castelion is positioned to challenge other defense companies in the region. Their motto, “peace through deterrence,” reflects a framework often associated with Cold War-era defense policy. The company frequently references the rising capabilities and threats of the Chinese military.
One of Castelion’s stated goals is on “maintaining the military advantage needed for a lasting and enduring peace.”
After announcing over $100 million in seed funding earlier this year, the Silicon Valley-backed company is seen as a potential disruptor in missile production. Three of the company’s cofounders formerly worked with SpaceX, the Elon Musk-owned rocket company.
The Wall Street Journal noted in January that Castelion has about $22 million in federal government contracts, mostly from the Air Force.
“It is an economic development prospect for the region,” Deputy County Administrator Carmine DeBonis told Arizona Luminaria about the company. DeBonis also said that the county signed a nondisclosure agreement with the company late last year.
While DeBonis said he could not go into any further detail about the company or what they may be planning in Pima County, he said the goal of such economic development projects “is to attract employment-generating opportunities for residents of the community.”
“Sustainable wages, high paying jobs is really the focus,” DeBonis added.
According to Pima County Board of Supervisors Rules and Regulations, the administrator has a specific responsibility to inform the chair about economic development projects.
“The County Administrator shall make the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors or his/her designee aware of all potential economic development projects,” according to the regulations.
However, both current chair of the Board of Supervisors Rex Scott and former chair Adelita Grijalva told Arizona Luminaria they had never heard of Castelion.
Scott took over the position as chair in January.
Andy Squires, public information officer for the City of Tucson, told Arizona Luminaria that Tucson “has an NDA with an aerospace and defense company.” He said that because of the nondisclosure agreement, he could offer no further details.
In March of this year, Kelly wrote a letter to two of Castelion’s executives — Bryon Hargis, Castelion’s CEO, and Bobby Panerio, the head of manufacturing for the company — touting Southern Arizona as a region well situated for the company’s expansion.
“The proposed site for Castelion’s expansion in Tucson is home to the University of Arizona,” Kelly wrote. The UA has been researching hypersonic missiles for years.
Kelly noted in the letter that Arizona is “ranked the fourth-highest concentration of aerospace manufacturing jobs in the nation.” He cited other major aerospace and defense corporations with footprints in the region including Boeing, General Dynamics, Honeywell Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon Missile Systems.
Kelly ended his letter: “As you continue your site-selection process, I ask that you give full and fair consideration to the many opportunities offered by Arizona.”
Castelion did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Arizona Luminaria also reached out to Hargis and Panerio, without response.
UA’s Vice President for Research and Partnerships, Tomás Díaz de la Rubia, stressed in an email to Arizona Luminaria the importance of partnerships, and their role in moving “from discovery to real-world innovation that improves the lives of people everywhere.”
Díaz de la Rubia did not specifically mention Castelion.
“The UA welcomes the opportunity to explore partnerships with private sector corporations to advance cutting-edge research, particularly in space sciences, national security and defense, fusion energy commercialization, AI-driven healthcare and mining for critical minerals.”
The UA has also entered into a nondisclosure agreement, Alex Craig, an associate professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, told Arizona Luminaria.
Wooing missile manufacturing
In an email sent to Arizona Luminaria on May 19, Sen. Kelly’s office touted the “seamless partnership between Arizona’s federal, state, and local leaders” in helping to bring private sector investments to the region.
“Senator Kelly supported the Arizona Commerce Authority’s ongoing efforts to bring these jobs to our state by sending a letter highlighting all that Arizona has to offer to aerospace and defense companies,” it said.
Alyssa Tufts, vice president of public relations for the Arizona Commerce Authority, told Arizona Luminaria via email that they could not comment. “While we appreciate your inquiry, we cannot comment on active economic development projects,” she said.
Mignonne Hollis, executive director of Arizona Regional Economic Development Foundation, and a board member of Aerospace Arizona, told Arizona Luminaria she was “super excited to get new industry into our region.” While Hollis’s foundation is in Cochise County, she said, “What’s good for one county is good for all of Arizona.”
Hollis said that bringing Castelion to the region would be “a fantastic win for all of us.”
Community concern
While the Tucson region has a long history of defense manufacturing, it also has a long history of activists who decry the negative environmental impacts and the ethics of the industry.
Jack Cohen-Joppa is a longtime Arizona anti-nuclear and anti-war activist and one of the co-coordinators of The Nuclear Resister.
“People need to hear other arguments besides ‘good jobs’ and ‘we need to beat the enemy,’” Cohen-Joppa told Arizona Luminaria of the growing aerospace defense industry.
“If these entrepreneurs were truly interested in peace and security, they’d recognize that we need better ideas to make war obsolete and not better weapons that make it unavoidable,” Cohen-Joppa said.
Russ McSpadden, Southwest Conservation Advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, also saw more missile production in the region as cause for concern.
McSpadden recalled that “Tucson is still grappling with the toxic legacy of Hughes Aircraft Co., whose missile manufacturing operations contaminated groundwater with trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent linked to cancer, birth defects, and neurological disorders.”
Both the U.S. Air Force and the Tucson International Airport contributed to the contamination. The Environmental Protection Agency declared the area a superfund site.
The Center for Biological Diversity has long been a critic of defense contractors in the region.
McSpadden added: “Tucson should be divesting from the economy of death, not wooing it into our community.”
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