Kratos expands workforce, footprint in Orlando
A growing need for high-tech flight simulators and weapons trainers has helped grow a defense firm’s Orlando workforce, with employment expected to surpass 300 by the end of the year.
To accommodate recent growth in employees and projects, San Diego’s Kratos Defense and Security Solutions’ Orlando-based tech and training division has expanded into a 50,000-square-foot building.
The facility sits alongside the company’s 100,000-square-foot building, with an additional 40,000 square feet of land also available for potential future expansion.
The expansion has happened because the company has managed to gain a foothold in the competitive military defense market, which has a smaller number of companies battling for contracts, said Jose Diaz, senior vice president for the company’s Orlando operations.
“Immersive technology is very congested,” he said. “But a lot of that has been focused on gaming. But when you talk about DoD [Department of Defense] projects, it becomes a much-smaller” market.
A walk through Kratos’ facility in southeast Orlando shows off the stages that go into building a simulator for the military.
Workers can be seen huddled over desks, assembling components and circuit boards that will be placed into the simulators.
Across the hall, large, hulking frames that resemble several styles of military helicopters tower over employees and visitors.
Although it’s mostly empty now, the new building has a small virtual reality design area alongside some of its newer large-scale projects.
Loud, popping machine gun sounds can be heard as technicians test their work.
“The technology has become more and more sophisticated as battles are becoming more and more sophisticated,” said Russ Ryan, the company’s marketing director and a Vietnam War veteran who served in the Marines from 1966 to 1969.
In 2010, Kratos paid about $6 million and assumed the debt of Diaz’s company DEI Services Corp., then in Winter Park.
At the time, DEI employed about 130 people in Central Florida. Now, the company is pushing 300. It’s a story of growth in a region that has one of the more-robust defense industries in the world.
The economic group Florida High Tech Corridor estimates that more than 30,000 people in the region work for modeling, simulation and training companies.
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have big sections of their workforces here, as do the simulation arms of every major military branch.
Each year, Kratos hauls one of its self-contained simulators to I/ITSEC, an annual trade show at the Orange County Convention Center that draws representatives from all branches of the military and from across the world.
That conference gives the company a chance to market their work, even as they gather feedback on their machines.
“It’s become a hub,” Diaz said of Central Florida. “It’s kind of still a hidden industry because theme parks and tourism take so much attention.”