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RIO RANCHO — The war in Iran hasn’t had an impact on the timeline on Project Ranger.
Andrew Kreitz, CFO and co-founder of Castelion Corporation, said early this week via email that the situation in the Middle East “has no impact on our plans (since we are going as quickly as possible anyway), but it really underscores the importance and urgency of the project.”
The conflict began Feb. 28, when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran, later confirming the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. On Friday, the Associated Press reported that the war “has escalated to affect more than a dozen countries across the Middle East.”
A Friday morning update from the AP noted that 1,230 people in Iran have been killed, as have more than 200 in Lebanon and around a dozen in Israel, according to officials in those countries. Additionally, six U.S. troops have been killed, according to the report.
Castelion’s Project Ranger, located in Sandoval County three miles west of Rio Rancho, is a hypersonic solid rocket motor facility that officially broke ground in January and is to be the company’s main production campus.
During a December community meeting on Project Ranger, Kreitz noted the “substantial national need” for development and production of hypersonic missiles at a high volume and low cost. Volume and production rates matter, he said, and the company is stepping in as a contractor for the Department of War (formerly Department of Defense) and others.
“That’s what the country is missing right now,” Kreitz said at that meeting. “We as a country have the lowest munitions stockpile that we have had since the outbreak of the Second World War,” noting that much of what the U.S. had was sent to Ukraine to help fight Russia.
In his March 3 email, Kretiz again noted the importance of Project Ranger to national defense.
“There’s a lot of coverage you may be seeing about low munitions inventories, and that’s exactly the problem we’re laser focused on solving,” he said.
