The company is expected to receive a $35 million grant to quadruple its domestic production of a type of chip used in F-15 and F-35 fighter jets, as well as satellites and other defense systems. The grant is intended to help ensure a more secure supply of a component that is critical for the United States and its allies.
The award is the first of several expected in the coming months, as the Commerce Department begins distributing the $39 billion in federal funding that Congress authorised under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act. The money is intended to incentivise the construction of chip factories in the United States and lure back a key type of manufacturing that has slipped offshore in recent decades.
The decision to select for the first award a defence contractor, rather than a commercial semiconductor facility, was meant to emphasise the administration’s focus on national security, officials said.
At an event at BAE Systems in Nashua, New Hampshire, commerce secretary Gina Raimondo said the United States had become “dangerously reliant” on a few countries in Asia for its chips, including technology that goes into military systems. Posters showing a pilotless drone, fighter pilots and a jet engine were displayed behind her.
“In order to defend our great country, we need to make the chips that go into military equipment in the United States of America, by Americans,” Raimondo said. “And that’s what this is about.”
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In the coming months, the Biden administration is expected to announce much larger grants for major semiconductor manufacturing facilities run by companies such as Intel, Samsung or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., known as TSMC. Raimondo said that within the next year, the department would announce 10 or 12 grants to other companies, some of them worth several billions of dollars and other in the tens of millions. Speaking after the event, Raimondo said the Commerce Department had “purposefully” chosen a relatively small award as its first grant but said bigger sums to other firms would be announced next year. Awards for facilities that make the most advanced chips are likely to be announced in the first months of 2024, she said.
