Divergent's New Printer Targets the Tomahawk Bottleneck

Divergent says a fleet of in-house metal printers can turn out tens of thousands of missile airframes a year, and Breaking Defense reports it is already a second source for the Tomahawk. Whether that reaches the fleet depends on numbers the company has not yet shown.

Divergent Technologies wants to answer America's missile shortage with a printer. On June 17 the Torrance company announced Monolith One, a metal printer it calls the most advanced industrial machine of its kind in the United States, and a 430,000-square-foot second factory in Long Beach that it says will eventually run 70 of the machines. The same week, Breaking Defense reported that Raytheon has put Divergent under contract as a second source for the midbody structure of the Tomahawk cruise missile, with production targeted for the first half of 2027.

The timing is pointed: the announcement lands as the US Navy asks Congress for 785 Tomahawks in 2027 and as the wider missile-industrial base strains to deliver the long-range weapons a Pacific war would burn through. The figures that would show whether printed parts can move those inventory curves are not in the public record. Divergent has not disclosed qualified delivery rates, accepted production lots, a cost per airframe, or yield. The company is well funded and has named customers; what it has not documented is conversion, the step from a financed factory to accepted missile parts.

What happened

Divergent issued its announcement through PR Newswire on June 17, a day after the trade outlet TCT Magazine published the machine's specifications. The company describes Monolith One as a laser powder bed fusion printer with twelve 2-kilowatt lasers, 24 kilowatts of total laser power, and a 700-by-700-by-835-millimeter build volume, with six units already operating at its Torrance headquarters. Divergent says 64 more will come online at the Long Beach site over 24 months, lifting the fleet to 70 machines and supporting about 1,000 jobs at full capacity.

The factory's headline output figures are projections, and Divergent presents them as alternatives rather than a sum. When fully online, the company says, Long Beach could deliver any one of several annual mixes: more than 275,000 piece parts, more than 30,000 missile airframes in the 500-pound class, more than 60,000 warhead casings in the 100-pound class, or automotive structures instead. The machine itself is not for sale. Divergent says Monolith One is reserved for its own production system and cannot be bought or licensed by outside customers.