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Defense Project at Northrop Grumman
Northrop Grumman is the largest aerospace and defense employer in Utah with about 7,000 employees total and about 2,000 of those located in the Roy/Ogden area. Its pioneering solutions equip its customers with the capabilities they need to connect, advance and protect the U.S. and its allies.
In 2020, Northrop Grumman was formally selected by the U.S. Air Force to modernize the nation’s aging intercontinental ballistic missile system under a nine-year, $13.3 billion contract. This ensured that billions of dollars of work and thousands of jobs would come to Hill Air Force Base in Davis County.
Known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program, the work will be headquartered at Hill and involves the United States’ current land-based ballistic missile force, which is now made up of some 400 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Air Force is upgrading the missiles, their rocket motors and other components, but it plans to replace them through the GBSD program by about 2030.
The new program includes the acquisition of missiles, new command and control systems and, eventually, largescale renovations of launch control centers.
Work associated with the program will also be performed at the company’s Promontory facility in Box Elder County, along with a few other locations across the U.S. But the lion’s share of the program will happen on the far northwest corner of Hill.
The GBSD program is expected to bring at least 2,250 jobs to the Hill headquarters location alone over the next 20 years.
