Raytheon breaks ground on expansion
Raytheon Missile Systems unveiled the first phase of a $550 million expansion to its Tucson facilities Thursday, including new laboratory, missile testing and office space.
The company announced a 2,000 worker expansion two years ago that was aided by a $5 million grant from the state of Arizona. The new buildings with 559,000 square feet of commercial space are the result of that effort.
The buildings are expected to be complete by the end of the year, but the company has already hired nearly all of the workers it promised when the state announced the grant, said Taylor Lawrence, president of Raytheon Missile Systems.
It now has about 12,000 workers in Tucson.
“I’m really thankful to the governor for his leadership and seeing this through in terms of promoting the state and helping us establish an additional facility here in Tucson,” Lawrence said Thursday.
Gov. Doug Ducey spoke at the event to celebrate southern Arizona’s largest employer.
“The fact that a global industry leader like Raytheon chose Tucson for this expansion is testament to this city’s growing reputation as a hotbed for innovative businesses and technologies,” Ducey said, according to his prepared remarks.
Raytheon has an estimated $2.1 billion annual economic benefit to the state, according to an analysis from Arizona State University.
Lawrence said the expansion will al- low the expanded production of several missiles made, tested and refurbished at the facility.
One of the new buildings is a fivestory, windowless facility that blocks out all radio frequency to test the sensors on missiles before they are shipped to the U.S. military or its allies.
Raytheon already has smaller facilities that are used for that purpose, but needed to expand, he said.
“Potential adversaries are learning from us,” Lawrence said. “They are fielding capabilities that are faster, have longer ranges, can detect our missiles. We have to respond by being even faster and having longer ranges.”
Raytheon has multiple products seeing sales growth that require more space, he said.
Among them is a new version of the company’s “Small Diameter Bomb II,” called “Stormbreaker.” The bombs use a variety of sensors to home in on a target, allowing aircraft to drop one munition rather than carpet-bombing an area to hit a target.
The new Stormbreaker uses radar, infrared, laser and GPS guidance “to see through any kind of weather, day or night, and find targets and distinguish and recognize different kinds of targets and go after the one it was told to go get, so it has some artificial intelligence,” Lawrence said.
Raytheon also makes Tomahawk cruise missiles, and when they are not shot at targets, they are sent back to the company at set intervals for servicing.
Starting next year, the company will not only refurbish the Tomahawks to ensure they are ready to launch, but will retrofit them with enhanced sensors to make them more capable, he said.
Lawrence said the company hires most of its new workers from the University of Arizona and Arizona State University. It also has expanded its intern program so that college students can work at the site and gain the security clearance they need to become fulltime employees by the time they graduate.
“Our intern class last year we had folks from all over the place: MIT, Michigan, Purdue, Pittsburgh, Auburn,” Lawrence said.
The Tucson missile operations, formerly part of Hughes Aircraft Co., are a subsidiary of Raytheon Co. of Waltham, Mass., which also includes integrated defense systems, intelligence and information services, and space and airborne systems.
While Raytheon Missile Systems is headquartered in Tucson, the company has not always expanded there. In 2010 the company announced a $75 million expansion with 300 workers for Alabama.
That decision redoubled the efforts of Arizona officials to accommodate Raytheon to allow for expansions.
One reason that Alabama was chosen over Arizona was an access road on the south side of the Arizona facility that prevented additional manufacturing on site.