The US rocket engine firm, Aerojet Rocketdyne, announced in March that it has launched a continuous, competitive improvement program (CIP) aimed at reducing costs and increasing operational efficiency among its 14 sites in USA. The result is that up to 10 per cent of its workforce of 5,000 employees is expected to be made redundant and laid off. Most of the job cuts are expected to be centred on Aerojet Rocketdyne’s main facility in Sacramento, California, USA.
The firm is known to be under competitive pressure, both indirectly from launch upstart SpaceX which builds its own rocket engines, but also from Blue Origin which has started to build its LOx/Methane powered BE-4 engine for its own rockets, and for others including the likely successor to ULA’s Delta IV and Atlas V.
