By Mike Stone

WASHINGTON, May 27 (Reuters) - X-Bow Systems said on Wednesday it has certification for end-to-end production operations for two manufacturing systems at its Texas facility, a milestone in a Pentagon-backed effort to open more solid rocket motor supply chains.

The Pentagon has been pushing to add suppliers beyond the two dominant rocket motor makers, Northrop Grumman NOC.N and L3Harris Technologies LHX.N, as surging demand driven by wars in Ukraine, Israel and Iran has underscored a need to restock U.S. missile inventories.

The Albuquerque, New Mexico-based company said the necessary certification milestone was reached in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory's Rapid Energetics & Advanced Rocket Manufacturing program, known as RE-ARM, under a contract to develop and demonstrate the company's patented solid propellant manufacturing technology.

The two systems involved are a fixed, industrial-scale propellant production facility and a portable, containerized manufacturing unit that can be rapidly deployed and reproduced at multiple locations.

X-Bow, pronounced cross bow, is one of several startups that have emerged to address that gap. The company was previously awarded a Navy contract to develop and test solid fuel rocket engines for the service's Standard Missile program, part of a series of prototype contracts the Navy awarded to expand its roster of motor suppliers.

Wednesday's milestone shows the company's manufacturing is moving beyond development toward the kind of high-volume output the Pentagon is urgently seeking.

"Our vision for production is a few million pounds of solid propellant per year, with options to significantly increase that as we scale to meet national needs," Jason Hundley, X-Bow founder and chief executive, said in a statement.

"The RE-ARM program is forging advanced technologies for rapid, affordable, flexible, and scalable manufacturing of solid rocket motors in support of national defense," said Dr. Javier Urzay, chief of the Rocket and Space Propulsion Division at the Air Force Research Laboratory.

X-Bow is backed by investors including Lockheed Martin Ventures and Boeing BA.N.