GOEX Industries is the sole domestic source of an energetic material found in dozens of munitions
Black powder is among the oldest manufactured materials in American military history. More than a century after smokeless powder displaced it as a propellant, black powder remains irreplaceable in U.S. military munitions. The sequence of controlled energetic events that makes a munition function reliably begins, in many cases, with black powder.
There is only one facility in the United States that produces black powder and other critical chemicals. That facility is Voyager Technologies’ GOEX Industries, located at Camp Minden in northwestern Louisiana. Following Voyager’s modernization, it is producing again.
“Every munition that depends on black powder depends on GOEX,” said Matt Kuta, president, Voyager. “There is no other domestic source and no substitute material. Scaling this capability strengthens the foundation of the defense industrial base, ensuring the nation’s supply chain.”
A 220-Year Legacy
GOEX traces its lineage to 1802, when E.I. du Pont de Nemours broke ground on the original black powder plant along the Brandywine River in Delaware. That operation supplied the U.S. military through the war of 1812, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam. By the early 1970s, the facility had become part of GOEX, which moved manufacturing to Minden, Louisiana in 1997.
For more than two centuries, the mission remained the same: maintain the domestic production of an energetic material.
Black powder’s military role is specific and load bearing. It is not a propellant in the modern sense — smokeless powder long ago replaced it in that role — but it performs functions that no other material replicates at scale. It serves as the delay element in fuses, creating the precise, controlled burn interval between initiation and detonation that determines when and how a munition functions. It serves as the ignition charge in artillery and mortar rounds. It appears in grenades, signaling systems, blank-fire charges and primers across the munitions inventory.
The characteristics that make black powder useful, such as predictable burn rate, reliable ignition, sensitivity to heat rather than shock, are the same characteristics that make it difficult to replace. Substituting another material requires requalifying the munition, a process that can take years and carries no guarantee of success.
Re-Onshoring America’s Black Powder Supply
Black powder is a precision energetic material with exacting specifications that munitions programs cannot compromise on. For years, domestic production capacity did not keep pace with the scale and reliability the defense industrial base requires.
GOEX Industries is the cornerstone of America’s re-onshored black powder supply chain. With federal investment to expand manufacturing capacity and vertically integrate production, including domestic sourcing of charcoal and barium peroxide, GOEX is being built into a world-class energetics facility that gives the U.S. defense industrial base a reliable, sovereign and scalable domestic source.
Charcoal is a primary component in the black powder formulation itself. Barium peroxide serves as a high-performance oxidizer across pyrotechnics, countermeasures, signaling systems and explosive formulations throughout the defense inventory. Bringing both under one vertically integrated roof means greater consistency, greater reliability and greater control over the variables that matter most.
“When you own the full supply chain from raw inputs to finished black powder, you control the variables that determine whether a defense program gets what it needs, when it needs it,” said Karl Kulling, general manager, Voyager Energetics. “Vertical integration is how you deliver the consistency and reliability that munitions programs require, and how you build a domestic capability the defense industrial base can count on for decades.”
Scaling for the Defense Industrial Base
The restart of production is not simply a return to prior operating levels. It’s a scaled, vertically integrated operation built to meet the demand that defense programs require and to eliminate the input dependencies that made the prior supply chain fragile.
GOEX is one piece of a larger architecture. Voyager’s American Defense Complex in Pueblo, Colorado — 150,000 square feet of advanced manufacturing, operations and testing — is designed to house and scale the critical defense capabilities the U.S. needs.
GOEX is an active, irreplaceable node in the supply chain that makes American munitions function and Voyager is building the infrastructure to keep it that way.