Lockheed Martin To Hire 300 in Salina, Swelling Workforce To Biggest in 10 Years

Salina, N.Y. — Lockheed Martin Corp. plans to hire 300 people in Salina in 2023, bringing the workforce at the defense contractor’s suburban Syracuse campus to its highest level in 10 years.

Chandra Marshall, Lockheed’s vice president of radar and sensor systems and general manager of the Salina plant, said the hiring will fill new engineering and manufacturing positions. Most of the new jobs will be in engineering, including system, software, hardware, power, radio frequency and mechanical engineers, she said.

Lockheed created 150 new jobs at the plant last year, bringing its workforce to 2,000 people, she said.

The 300 additional jobs that will be created this year will bring the workforce to 2,300, the most since 2013 and matching its previous employment high in Salina, according to Marshall.

Expansions of existing and new defense contracts are driving the plant’s comeback, she said.

“It’s really the current programs we have are expanding and we’re constantly addressing new needs from the customers that we have,” said Marshall.

Those programs include Lockheed’s contract to produce the U.S. Army’s Q-53 extended-range radar, which detects incoming rocket, mortar and artillery fire. In April, Lockheed’s Salina plant received a U.S. Army contract extension worth up to $1.6 billion to produce the radars, one of the largest contracts on record for the plant known as Electronics Park.

They also include Lockheed’s TPY-4 long-range radar, which was developed in Salina and is being produced there for the U.S. Air Force and, soon, for international military partners including Norway. Last year, the Air Force chose the TPY-4 to be its principal long-range radar of the future, replacing the Air Force’s main TPS-75 air search radar, which was built by Northrop Grumman and dates back to the Vietnam War era.

The TPY-4 radars are expected to generate sales worth at least $1.3 billion over the next 10 years, according to defense industry analysts.

In addition, the Salina plant beat out rival Raytheon in 2019 in its bid to produce the Army’s new Sentinel A4 radar, an upgraded system intended to better detect cruise missiles, drones and other airborne threats to U.S. forces. The contract is expected to be worth up to $3 billion, which would make it the largest in the history of Electronics Park.

While radars are the biggest part of the Salina plant’s business, it also produces electronic warfare systems for the Army and the Navy, and towed-array sonar systems, which allow the Navy’s submarines and surface ships to detect and track quiet diesel or nuclear-powered submarines from long distance.

“We have a huge demand at our site,” said Marshall. “It’s a good time for Syracuse. We have lots of work, lots of new programs, lots of additional orders on legacy programs.”

Syracuse companies are facing lots of competition for engineers. And that competition is about to get even stiffer with Micron Technology planning to build a giant computer chip plant in Clay. The memory maker is expected to employ up to 9,000 people directly, many of them engineers, and more than 40,000 more at support companies that will want to locate nearby.

But Marshall said Lockheed will not be competing for the same engineers as Micron because the two companies make products that require different skills.

“I think what sets Lockheed Martin apart is the fact that we design cutting-edge technology that defends our troops,” she said. “When you look at a company like Micron, they produce components that would go into things that we design. So I think it’s a different skill set, probably complementary but different.”

Rick Moriarty covers business news and consumer issues. Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact him anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-3148

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