Hypersonic missile factory planned yards from Rio Rancho homes

Project Ranger is Castelion’s planned main manufacturing and testing hub, which the company calls America’s largest dedicated hypersonic production facility. It covers 1,000 acres outside the city of Rio Rancho, near Albuquerque. Castelion broke ground on January 21, expects construction to finish by the end of the year, and is aiming for mass production as early as next year.

Hypersonic missiles are any missiles that fly at five times the speed of sound or faster. At a community meeting in 2025, co-founder Andrew Kreitz said the site would build solid rocket motors and complete missiles, but that nothing would be launched there and no chemicals, including the oxidizer ammonium perchlorate, would be made on site. Sandoval County officials said the plant would bring about 300 jobs, many of them well-paid engineering roles.

The biggest worry is fire. In June 2025, Sandia National Laboratories wrote a hazard report on the project through a state program meant to give small New Mexico businesses free access to national lab expertise. It named a large storage facility fire as the worst-case scenario.

According to that report, Castelion planned to keep up to 250,000 pounds of ammonium perchlorate, a heat-sensitive chemical that helps rocket fuel burn, in covered magazines and bunkers. The assessment found that in a fire, buildings would simply be left to burn, sending hydrochloric acid gas into the air.

Sandia released a heavily redacted version of the report under a public records request, but the black boxes were only drawn over the text. Anyone could copy and paste the hidden words, which is how the full findings became public.

Emails with Rio Rancho officials show Castelion was still negotiating fire safety standards after construction was well underway. The company declined to comment to reporters on the safety concerns. Local resident Laura Lundberg summed up the mood, saying she lives next door to where World War III will be manufactured.

Castelion was founded in November 2022 by three former SpaceX executives. Its pitch is cheaper hypersonic weapons. Its main product, Blackbeard, is a solid-rocket missile originally set to sell for $384,000 each. For comparison, the Army’s Dark Eagle, the most advanced US hypersonic weapon, runs about $41 million a missile, based on a 2023 estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

Investors and the Pentagon have bought in. Castelion is now valued at $13 billion, more than four times its $2.8 billion valuation from a year earlier, and it has received over $500 million in military contracts in about 18 months. The Navy alone has committed $163.4 million for the first 50 Blackbeard missiles across three contracts this year, which works out to about $3.3 million per missile, far above the original price. In September, the Navy awarded Castelion up to $200 million more, its biggest contract yet.

Castelion has not published any test data showing how well Blackbeard performs.

New Mexico was not the first choice. Back in August 2023, operating as Pallas Industrials, the company sought permission for a rocket plant in Churchill County, Nevada, with plans to test rocket motors up to eight days a month. Local officials there asked for detailed testing conditions and safety rules. Soon afterward, the company withdrew from Nevada, renamed itself Castelion and began testing soil in western Rio Rancho.

Residents say that by the time they noticed soil-testing trucks in spring 2025, Castelion was already in talks with state officials about the land.

Rio Rancho Estates is an unincorporated community, meaning it has no city government of its own, which leaves residents relying on county and state officials for answers. Many people moved there for cheap land and quiet, close to elementary schools and parks.

The trade-off is stark. The factory promises hundreds of skilled jobs and an economic boost. Neighbors get the uncertainty, plus the risk of toxic smoke in a worst-case fire. At public meetings, residents have asked for evacuation plans, fire response details and more transparency.

If you live near the site, the practical steps are to ask Sandoval County and Rio Rancho officials for the emergency response plan, find out how you would be alerted in a fire, and attend future public meetings on the project.