Look beyond Northrop Grumman Corp.’s move of its corporate flag from Century City to the Washington, D.C., area, and you won’t see much evidence of Los Angeles losing its position as a leading center for aerospace work and defense contracting.
The local landscape is buzzing with aerospace companies, many of them fairly small, that contract with the government and commercial customers on satellite projects and weapon systems. Several engineering and project management companies are making a living off aerospace and defense.
“The reality is there’s probably more here than anybody knows about in terms of advanced aerospace research and development,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.
The region serves as the headquarters for up-and-coming companies such as Monrovia drone maker AeroVironment Inc., which manufactures unmanned aircraft systems used by the U.S. military, and engineering firms such as downtown L.A.’s Aecom Technology Corp., which provides informational technology services for the armed forces.
And those smaller companies are routinely nailing down significant contracts.
For example:
• AeroVironment last month received a $23.9 million order for the Army and Marine Corps. The contract covers upgrades to the company’s Raven unmanned aircraft system, a 4.2-pound hand-launched aircraft used to provide real-time video images for surveillance and targeting.
The contract, which has a total potential value of $66.6 million, of which $42.7 million has not yet been funded, comes as AeroVironment reported better-than-expected profit for its fiscal second quarter revenue.
• Space Exploration Technologies Inc., the Hawthorne-based company better known as SpaceX, became an aerospace industry force when it sent a satellite into orbit last year for the Malaysian government.
The launch of the land survey satellite proved that SpaceX could offer satellite services to governments and private companies at a lower cost, said the company, which is bankrolled by PayPal millionaire Elon Musk. SpaceX had already been working with the government, which awarded the company a contract in 2008 to launch cargo to the International Space Station.
• Aecom received a $78.8 million, six-moth extension contract in October to support U.S. Army operations in Afghanistan.
The engineering firm’s management support services, which include training, logistics and consulting for government agencies, posted revenue of $292 million for the quarter ending Sept. 30, an increase of 18 percent from the same period last year.
• Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. strengthened its presence in the aerospace sector last month when the Pasadena company acquired 1,500-person professional services firm Tybrin Corp. of Walton Beach, Fla. Tybrin supplies mission planning, software development and other services for the Defense Department, NASA and other government agencies.
The number of aerospace jobs in Los Angeles County has held relatively steady in recent years, constituting slightly less than 1 percent of total local employment.
According to an economic forecast released in July by the Economic Development Corp., there were an estimated 37,300 aerospace jobs in 2009, down 2.6 percent from 38,300 jobs the year before. However, the number of jobs in 2008 had increased by one-half a percent from 38,100 in 2007.
Kyser said there’s no need to prophesy doom. Northrop may be moving 300 jobs closer to the Pentagon, but it will still employ more than 20,000 in the L.A. area. Other well-known aerospace and defense companies, such as Boeing and Raytheon, still have significant operations here and they’re not likely to pick up and move their sprawling factories.
“A lot of the aerospace and defense companies are going to where the customer is, which is Washington, D.C.,” said Kyser. “But in terms of the brains of the industry, they’re still here.”
