F-22 Pact Has Thin Silver Lining for Southland
The good news for Southern California in Tuesday’s announcement that a Lockheed-led team will build the nation’s next fighter jet was spread rather thin.
Lockheed estimates that the F-22 advanced tactical fighter project will generate 5,000 jobs for subcontractors in Southern California. But many subcontractors expect the new jobs simply to replace positions in expiring programs; the net employment gain will be far smaller, according to company spokesmen.
Perhaps the biggest beneficiary will be Hughes Aircraft Co.’s Radar Systems Group in El Segundo, which will manufacture a central computer for the plane’s avionics system. The company expects the F-22 contract to generate about 1,300 jobs.
However, most of the new jobs at Hughes won’t be created until the late 1990s, when the plane moves from the design stage into production. And the F-22 contract will largely “sustain jobs that already exist,” spokesman Kearney Bothwell said Tuesday.
TRW’s San Diego-based Military Electronics & Avionics division will add more than 100 employees during the coming year. The company is designing an electronic system that will “help pilots navigate through dangerous territory,” said Roy J. Adams, vice president and general manager of the TRW division.
TRW will add several hundred jobs at a Colorado Springs, Colo., plant when production begins in the latter half of the decade.
The F-22 contract was the second major military order for the San Diego-based division, coming just weeks after TRW won a pact to produce a similar electronic identification package for the light helicopter being developed by Boeing and Sikorsky.
Adams set the value of the contract to TRW at about $200 million. For TRW, one of a handful of companies that was a member of both teams seeking the fighter contract, the value of the contract would have swelled to about $500 million had the Defense Department selected the Northrop/McDonnell Douglas team.
There will be “no immediate impact” on employment at Santa Monica-based Lear Astronics Corp., which will manufacture part of the F-22’s avionics package, according to Bill Brank, vice president of operations.
Longer-term, “any additions will be negligible,” Brank added.
For XAR Industries, a privately held company in City of Industry that will produce in-flight refueling equipment for the F-22, the Lockheed award translates into “a long-term program that will give a stable employment base,” XAR co-founder Tom Taquino said.
“This could (generate) lots of new business for us in the future, but we’re a small company, with only 25 employees,” Taquino said.
