The Pentagon has awarded $21 million to California-based biotech startup Biosphere to build a high-tech, 20,000-liter brewery, where genetically engineered microbes will produce essential chemicals for military supplies
“America’s ability to compete with China depends in part on our ability to manufacture the materials that underpin our economy and national defense,” Biosphere CEO Brian Heligman said in a press release today. “Instead of relying on complex global supply chains and highly specialized production facilities, we can use biology to manufacture a broad range of critical chemicals from domestically available feedstocks.”
Potential products range from a “bio-cement” mixture, which turns loose sand to solid landing surfaces for helicopters, to polymer-bonded explosives (PBX) for weapons like the Hellfire missile, Heligman told Breaking Defense in an interview.
While he declined to disclose morespecifics on the products, Heligman said that “we’ve had some detailed discussions around two or three fine chemicals which should be quite a good fit for the facility [and] the government priorities they’ve articulated.”
Biomanufacturing uses vats of microorganisms, genetically engineered to produce a desired substance: It’s essentially a high-tech version of how breweries use yeast to turn grain into alcohol. The bio approach is technologically trickier than traditional industrial chemistry in many ways: Biosphere, for instance, uses UV light to sterilize miles of piping, so they don’t grow the wrong microorganisms by mistake. But biomanufacturing can also produce things petrochemistry can’t, or it can produce the same things with less energy consumption and pollution.
Biosphere’s new $21 million facility is slated for commissioning in the fourth quarter of 2027. At20,000 liters, it is one of the largest Defense-funded bio factories to date, about the size of a thriving microbrewery, Heligman told Breaking Defense. Its projected output, about 100 tons of chemicals a year is tiny compared to an industrial petrochemical plant producing bulk plastics, he said, but it’s ten times the size of 1,000-liter systems currently standard in military labs to brew experimental batches of new chemicals.
The new mid-sized facility represents a “sweet spot” for defense needs in particular, Heligman argued.It can make sufficient quantities for munitions and other military programs, without the overhead of a traditional bulk-manufacturing facility.
Bombardier Defense, your trusted, mission-focused partner
A commitment to long-term operational value.
“They don’t need massive-scale, commodity-plastic volumes,” Heligman said of the military. “A small, specialty-chemical production line is a useful asset for them.”
That’s because the military needs a lot of bespoke chemicals, like the advanced energetics used in explosive warheads, for which there’s little civilian demand. Right now, Pentagon demand is high as the military rushes to restock munitions expended against Iran, but there’ve historically been dramatic peaks and valleys in Defense Department funding for energetics. Those two factors combined make it hard to convince traditional chemical manufacturers to invest in production capacity for these “critical chemicals” in the US, as both industry and government officials lamented Tuesday at a Hudson Institute conference.
That said, Heligman isn’t averse to scaling up, either. “We are using this as a demonstration asset to also show that our cost advantage translates to even the very large facilities as well,” Heligman told Breaking Defense. And with rapid advances in genetic engineering and AI simulation of biological processes, he predicted, the potential will just keep growing.
Today’s contract announcement comesless than six months after an earlier Pentagon award to Biosphere, worth up to $9 million if all options are exercised, to develop a portable, electrically powered bio-brewery that can make protein out of water and air. (The water and air feed the microorganisms, which make the protein).
Both awards are part of a larger Pentagon push to shore up its supply chains and rebuild American manufacturing of vital components and chemicals that has been offshored to foreign suppliers, especially China. Much of this effort involves rebuilding traditional industrial capabilities in the US — but the military is also exploring emerging technologies like biomanufacturing.
To date, biomanufacturing has been overwhelmingly employed by the pharmaceuticals industry, which has built massive facilities in the US and abroad. But it’s increasingly possible to make microbes brew chemical ingredients for products of interest to the military, from high explosives to anti-corrosion coatings. Pentagon CTO Emil Michael himself elevated biomanufacturing to one of his top six “Critical Technology Areas” last year, even as he downgraded other priorities.
