Raytheon Expands Its Southern Arizona Presence

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Arizona Daily Star (Tucson)
March 26, 2008 $11B training program for U.S. Army personnel is launched in Sierra Vista
By Jack Gillum, Arizona Daily Star
SIERRA VISTA — Raytheon Co. expanded its presence in Southern Arizona Tuesday opening an office to support a $11 billion program to train U.S. Army personnel.
The program, run by Raytheon Technical Services Co.'s Warrior Training Alliance, will consolidate training at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca and at other sites around the globe.
A new office here will provide training support and development through the program's Warfighter Field Operations Customer Support, or FOCUS, contract, awarded in June 2007, a move that the company says will provide "significant savings" to the Pentagon. Raytheon would not disclose the dollar amount.
"We provide the infrastructure to train people in the right scenarios," WTA program manager Mike Edwards said in an interview Tuesday.
Raytheon will employ 50 to 60 people in Sierra Vista and manage about 1,100 subcontractors under the program, Edwards said.
Raytheon is the latest among several major defense contractors to open or expand in the Sierra Vista area. Northrop Grumman Corp., SAIC Inc., Lockheed Martin Corp., General Dynamics Corp. and Computer Sciences Corp. all have operations in the area, said Barry Albrecht, longtime director of the Sierra Vista Economic Development Foundation, who resigned in February.
While defense contractors have long been present at the fort, they have multiplied in the last 10 years, he said.
Raytheon manages a far-flung training environment for the Army.
At combat training centers in California, Louisiana and Germany, for example, Raytheon equips soldiers, tanks, Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles with networked laser tags before war games, and then compiles and analyzes data collected in the exercises for detailed reviews.
Raytheon said that since 1994, it has logged more than 560 million soldier-training hours and exercises worldwide.
Raytheon's role in Sierra Vista is essentially to be the "enabler" of training programs already in place, and to combine the management of three existing Army programs, Edwards said.
The company will coordinate subcontractors that, with Raytheon, will build scenario environments and offer other tools needed for instruction. The program is in collaboration with Computer Sciences Corp. and General Dynamics Information Technology Inc.
Training programs will support about 400 Army sites worldwide, the company said.
Raytheon's Reston, Va.-based Technical Services business unit reported about $2.17 billion in net sales for 2007, up from $2.15 billion the year before, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission documents show. Those sales include technical, scientific and professional services for commercial and federal-government customers, such as the National Science Foundation.
Waltham, Mass.-based Raytheon Co. has six divisions, including Technical Services and Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems. Missile Systems — the world's largest missile maker — has about 12,500 employees and is Southern Arizona's largest employer in this year's Star 200 survey of local businesses.
Includes information from The Boston Globe.
 
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