Defense and aerospace technology manufacturer L3Harris has announced plans for a $1.27 billion expansion of its Orange County site to increase the company’s production of solid rocket motors.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger and Carrie Chenery, Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade, joined L3Harris representatives and Orange County officials at the Orange County Public Safety Building on Wednesday, April 15, to celebrate the expansion, which is expected to create more than 350 jobs over the next five years.
J. Bryan Nicol, Chair of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, said he believes that the expansion of advanced technology manufacturing facilities like L3Harris has the potential to help localities like Orange County overcome the decline in general manufacturing that has been ongoing in Virginia and across the country. Reuters reported on that decline in January.
“Our door is wide open, and I think this will generate all kinds of future opportunities that we can bring to Orange that will result in an economic comeback for our community,” Nicol told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “We’re uniquely positioned to build on this and show that we have a positive business climate, we have a qualified workforce, and we’re making investments in our high school kids through our CTE (Career and Technical Education) program in a new building. All of these are avenues for a great future for our county.”
L3Harris, which has its corporate headquarters in Florida, has operated in Orange County for more than 30 years as part of a large network of campuses spanning from Rochester, New York to Anaheim, California. The company designs and manufactures various communication, imaging, propulsion and targeting equipment used for military and intelligence purposes such as rocket motors for missiles, night-vision goggles, weapon-mounted sights and range finders. The company also makes communication equipment used by first responders, utilities and transit organizations.
In addition to doing business in the U.S., 22% of the company’s revenue in fiscal 2025, or about $4.8 billion, came from sales in over 100 other countries, including to foreign militaries. Those international sales were funded through the U.S. government or its contractors, according to L3Harris’ most recent annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Orange County facility manufactures small-to-medium sized solid rocket motors and serves as the company’s Center of Excellence for Propellant Research.
The company also produces propulsion technology for aerospace travel, including more than 100 elements that were used earlier this month during the historic Artemis II lunar flight, the first crewed mission around the moon in 50 years, according to an L3Harris news release earlier this month.
Employees at the Orange site are responsible for building the jettison motor for the Artemis program, “a key component of the Launch Abort System for NASA’s Orion spacecraft,” according to the company.
The Orange County site currently employs approximately 360 people and includes 256,000 square feet of manufacturing space, but both the footprint and the workforce are set to double with the expansion.
The addition of 350 new jobs marks a substantial boost for the manufacturing workforce in Orange County, which recently dropped 10% in one day when Zamma Corporation closed without warning in early March, and suffered another major loss in 2025 when American Woodmark shut down its Orange plant.
Julie Wikete, L3Harris’ Orange County site director, told Charlottesville Tomorrow that the jobs created by the expansion will cover a wide range of operational duties and skill levels, not only those requiring prior tech experience or an engineering degree. She encouraged any displaced workers, including those from Zamma, to attend a job fair taking place May 13 at the Germanna Community College Daniel Technology Center in Culpeper.
“I would absolutely encourage some of those workers that are local that maybe are looking for another opportunity to come out to that job fair and talk to some of our manufacturing managers,” she said. “We are growing like crazy and we want the right passionate people as part of our team.”
According to a news release, L3Harris plans to focus its Orange expansion on the creation of what the company is calling the “Virginia Advanced Propulsion Facilities,” which will “support company operations such as mixing, grinding, casting and final assembly.”
Small solid rocket motors are used to power tactical missiles, while larger versions provide propulsion for intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Governor Spanberger has approved two grants, one for $12.5 million and another for $500,000, from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund to assist Orange County with the expansion, along with $5 million from the Virginia Investment Performance Grant, which provides an incentive for existing Virginia companies to make continued capital investments.
“We know that L3Harris is already a critical part of this community with the existing facility that has been here for decades and decades, but the expansion will more than double the manufacturing footprint in central Virginia,” said Gov. Spanberger. “It matters in Orange County, and it matters in Virginia.”
She added that “as somebody with a background in national security, it matters to keeping our country safe.”
Governor Spanberger worked as a CIA officer prior to starting her political career as a member of Congress in Virginia’s 7th District, and her husband, First Gentleman Adam Spanberger, works in technology for L3Harris.
Gov. Spanberger characterized the L3Harris expansion as an opportunity to showcase Virginia as a stable place for businesses to invest, in contrast to “a lot of uncertainty in the world right now.”
“As businesses of all sizes are trying to plan in the future — 5, 10, 25, 50 years into the future — what Virginia endeavors to offer, that at this moment seems increasingly rare, is an environment of stability and predictability,” she said.
A March 19 article from Time Magazine lists L3Harris as one of the top six defense contractors whose profits are expected to get a boost from increased military demand, stemming largely from the war with Iran. The war has divided public opinion in the U.S. and has led to many civilian deaths, including a military strike that hit an elementary school, killing at least 165 people in February. According to reporting from the Associated Press, video evidence and independent analysis implicates the U.S. military in the strike.
On March 6, L3Harris was one of seven major defense companies whose CEOs met with President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to discuss weapon production schedules, according to reporting from CNBC. Hegseth had previously visited L3Harris’ facility in Camden, Arkansas on Feb. 27 to thank workers for manufacturing products that would be used in “Operation Epic Fury” in Iran (read ongoing coverage of Iran in the AP) starting the following day. Talk Business & Politics reported on that visit in February.
Reuters reports that thousands of people, including hundreds of children, have been killed in ongoing the Iran war. The Trump administration’s increase of foreign conflicts is also contradictory with the the “no new wars” campaign promise made since 2016, and has markedly increased costs, including a $1.5 trillion defense budget request for 2027, according to The New York Times.
Informational materials provided by L3Harris on Wednesday state that the Orange County site expansion will include “supplementing medium-sized rocket motor programs currently being performed at the company’s Arkansas location.”
In a news release from the office of Gov. Spanberger, L3Harris Missile Solutions President Ken Bedingfield said, “L3Harris’ continued investments in solid rocket motor facilities are bolstering manufacturing capacity for key national defense programs. With a talented workforce and a community committed to long-term success, our expanded presence in Virginia will deliver additional capability to the Department of War and our allies.”
President Trump signed an executive order in September 2025 making “Department of War” a secondary name for the Department of Defense. Officially renaming the department would require congressional approval and cost as much as $125 million to implement.
During the announcement on Wednesday, L3Harris Vice President Mark Farley said that the Orange site expansion is part of a broader effort to expand production across the country “to support the urgent defense needs of our nation.”
“Before this expansion, we produced hundreds of rocket motors a year,” he said. “With this expansion, we’ll have the capability to produce thousands, and that’s transformational.”
