Hughes Helicopters will expand in Arizona.

A corporate headquarters move and expansion of assembly facilities will boost the firm’s employment in Arizona to 7,000 from 2,000 in five years, Hughes President Jack G. Real said. He made the comments at ground-breaking ceremonies for a 1.3-million-square-foot addition of office, lab and assembly facilities in Mesa, Ariz. Hughes Helicopters, which dedicated the existing facility in 1982, now builds AH-4A Apache attack helicopters in Mesa. It plans to add assembly and testing of the LMX “multirole” helicopter that the Army plans to purchase by the thousands.