Northrop Grumman Corporation is an aerospace and defense contractor with major Arizona operations in Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa and Sierra Vista, and it says it had more than 3,800 employees in the state as of October 2025. ABC15 reported on Sept. 30, 2026 that the company still says it employs about 3,800 people statewide [not independently verified]. On Oct. 1, 2026 the company opened the new A1 building on its Gilbert satellite campus, where it says more than 1,000 people work, and in September 2026 it said 350 Glide Phase Interceptor jobs are moving from Chandler to Gilbert because the Chandler site has run out of space. Its principal executive offices are at 2980 Fairview Park Drive in Falls Church, Virginia, and its common stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol NOC. The company was originally formed in 1939 in Hawthorne, California as Northrop Aircraft Incorporated. Its Space Systems segment, which lists Chandler and Gilbert among its major operations, makes satellites and spacecraft systems, sensors and payloads, ground systems, missile defense systems and interceptors, and launch vehicles and related propulsion systems. Worldwide, the company had approximately 95,000 employees as of December 31, 2025, total sales of $41,954 million in 2025, and a total backlog of $95.7 billion at the end of that year, up from $91.5 billion a year earlier. Public filings do not identify an Arizona-specific share of those figures, so Arizona AI does not attribute them to the state.
The verified facts show no role for Northrop Grumman's Arizona sites in artificial intelligence or in the semiconductor and electronics supply chain. Its annual report lists four Arizona major operations: Sierra Vista under Aeronautics Systems, Mesa under Defense Systems, and Chandler and Gilbert under Space Systems. The company says the Chandler facility designs, develops and produces advanced target vehicles and interceptors for the Missile Defense Agency and other government partners. The Gilbert campus is used for satellite design, engineering, manufacturing, testing and program management, and the company says the Mesa facility houses full production lines for the Bushmaster Chain Gun and medium caliber ammunition. The company's Arizona careers page says its employees there work on designing, maintaining and innovating autonomous systems, a sentence that appears in the Sierra Vista section of that page [not independently verified]. Arizona AI found nothing that ties these sites to chip design, fabrication, packaging, AI servers or AI services.
Northrop Grumman's satellite business, then part of a predecessor company, has been in Gilbert since the early 1990s [not independently verified]. In 2021 the company said it had supported the Missile Defense Agency's Ground Based Interceptor program in Arizona for nearly 20 years. Its Satellite Manufacturing Facility in Gilbert opened in 2004. The Gilbert Town Council approved a development agreement with Orbital ATK to retain 236 existing jobs and add at least 77 new ones, with the town providing up to $1.45 million toward development and job training costs; Arizona AI did not find whether those targets were met, and the record ends with a 2018 town case study. Northrop Grumman acquired Orbital ATK in 2018, and the City of Chandler and the Town of Gilbert both describe the Chandler and Gilbert operations as formerly Orbital ATK [not independently verified]. In December 2018 the company completed a 36,000 square foot expansion of its Bushmaster cannon production facility in Mesa, which it said nearly doubled production capacity. On Nov. 12, 2019 the City of Chandler held the ribbon cutting for a 633,000 square foot build-to-suit campus at 1575 S. Price Road, described as the home of the company's launch vehicles business; the city said ground was broken in March 2018 [not independently verified]. In Gilbert, the company broke ground on Jan. 30, 2020 on an expansion of its satellite operations and marked its completion on April 22, 2022, giving the 30-acre campus 435,000 square feet of space.
In September 2019 the Chandler facility started work on a $1.1 billion contract for missile targets for the Missile Defense Agency, and in November 2019 the City of Chandler reported that the launch vehicles operation contributed nearly $180 million in payroll to the local economy, up by $40 million since 2017. In March 2021 the company announced a Missile Defense Agency contract for the Next Generation Interceptor program, which the agency continued with Lockheed Martin alone in April 2024, and the City of Chandler counted it among the city's top 10 employers with approximately 2,500 employees on its 47-acre campus. In September 2024 the company announced that the Missile Defense Agency would proceed with Northrop Grumman for the Glide Phase Interceptor, which the company describes as a first-of-its-kind countermeasure against hypersonic missile threats, and in September 2026 it said the program's 350 jobs in Chandler are moving to Gilbert; the company says Arizona also builds the GQM-163A Coyote target, which simulates anti-ship missiles at speeds over Mach 2.5. The company says more than 100 spacecraft for NASA science programs, commercial communications and national security missions have been built and delivered from its Gilbert facility since 2004, and that NASA's Habitation and Logistics Outpost, a module meant to let astronauts live and work on long missions to the Moon and beyond, was being outfitted and integrated there as of October 2025. In December 2025 the Mesa operation entered full-rate production of Mk44 Stretch Bushmaster Chain Guns for the Marine Corps' new Amphibious Combat Vehicles. On Oct. 1, 2026 the company opened the new A1 building on its Gilbert campus, a 120,000 square foot facility for office, classified, integration and test, and mission support space [not independently verified]. No investment amount was disclosed, and the company says more than 1,000 people now work in Gilbert.
The company's Arizona record also includes setbacks. In April 2024 the Missile Defense Agency chose to continue development of the Next Generation Interceptor with Lockheed Martin alone, ending Northrop Grumman's role in that phase. In June 2024 the company notified the state of 543 possible layoffs at its Chandler office; the company said it expected more employees to receive notices than would ultimately be affected [not independently verified], and Arizona AI did not find the final number or any source tying the notice to the interceptor decision; the record ends with the June 2024 notice. The Chandler count of approximately 2,500 dates from 2021 and should be read as dated. In September 2026 the company said 350 jobs on the Glide Phase Interceptor program are moving from Chandler to Gilbert because the Chandler site has run out of space, a transfer within Arizona rather than new jobs; no update after that announcement was found.
Northrop Grumman says it has more than 3,800 employees and 350 supplier partners in Arizona, and it cites a study, not published with its statement, that says its operations support over 18,500 jobs and $5 billion in economic impact statewide; those jobs are not employees. The company also says it partners with Arizona State University on science, technology, engineering and mathematics education and research. Taken together, the verified facts show a defense and space manufacturer with four Arizona sites, centered on missile defense in Chandler and satellites in Gilbert, rather than an AI or chip company.