Rolls-Royce Completes $1 Billion Decade-Long Investment in Indiana Defense Manufacturing and Test Facilities

Rolls-Royce announced on August 27, 2026 that it had completed a $1 billion investment made over a decade in its Indiana manufacturing, assembly, and test facilities in Indianapolis, calling it the largest investment the company has made in the United States. The investment modernized advanced manufacturing across the Indianapolis campus and added new ground test facilities along with an altitude test facility in West Lafayette.

The Indianapolis campus builds engines for platforms including future engines for the U.S. Air Force B-52 strategic bomber and the U.S. Army's MV-75 Cheyenne, as well as current engines for the V-22 Osprey, the U.S. Navy's MQ-25A Stingray, and the C-130J. Rolls-Royce said more of its defense products are built in Indianapolis than anywhere else in the world.

Rolls-Royce employs approximately 3,500 people in Indianapolis, including a UAW workforce, and supports additional jobs through its Indiana supply chain. Across the United States, the company has invested more than $1.5 billion in its facilities and nearly $2.5 billion in research and development over the past decade. In 2024, its U.S. operations contributed $6.2 billion to the national economy and supported more than 30,000 jobs across 26 states. Indiana Governor Mike Braun and U.S. Senators Todd Young and Jim Banks issued statements on the investment's impact. The Indianapolis campus also hosts LibertyWorks, the company's advanced-research organization, which maintains a $75 million, 10-year alliance with Purdue University focused on high-temperature materials and propulsion research.

A single campus building engines for the B-52, the MV-75 Cheyenne, the V-22 Osprey, the MQ-25A Stingray, and the C-130J shows how a defense-engine supplier ties itself to a portfolio of government platforms across bomber, tiltrotor, uncertewed and transport categories at once, spreading program risk across multiple Pentagon customers rather than one contract.

The added ground and altitude test facilities matter because engine qualification for military platforms depends on dedicated test infrastructure that cannot be improvised elsewhere; owning that capacity in-house shortens the path from design to certified production engine for each of the named programs.

What happens next will show in whether the MV-75 Cheyenne and B-52 engine programs move from future-engine status into production orders routed through this campus, and whether the Purdue alliance yields materials advances that feed into those same engine lines.