- Northrop Grumman breaks ground on a new building at its Roy Innovation Center campus.
- The expansion will support the development of the Sentinel nuclear defense program.
- Utah Gov. Spencer Cox praises the program's contribution to national defense.
ROY — Northrop Grumman broke ground Tuesday on a new building at its Roy Innovation Center campus, while a company official said the Sentinel nuclear defense system is moving ahead with plans for flight tests next year.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox praised the company and said the program represents northern Utah's contribution to national defense and stability. Cox was in the Oval Office on Monday as President Donald Trump signed an order reducing the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments and recalled the president being told of the latest round of strikes on ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
The strikes are the latest escalation in the ongoing conflict between the U.S. and Iran after several months of a tenuous ceasefire.
"As we were sitting there having a conversation with the president, Marco Rubio walked in," the governor said, referring to the secretary of state as "a good friend." "He said, 'Mr. President, they've hit two more ships in the strait.' And that's real. The world is an ever-growing more dangerous place, and buildings like this make the world a safe place. They make America a safer place."
Northrop Grumman's latest expansion of its Roy site, known as the Legacy Building, will further bolster the company's development of the LGM-35 Sentinel, a land-based intercontinental ballistic missile that will eventually replace the Minuteman III missiles as part of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
"The Legacy program will be part of just expanding our workforce here," Ben Davies, corporate vice president and president of Northrop Grumman Defense Systems sector, told reporters. "We as a company have about 5,200 employees working on the Sentinel program, and we're continuing to grow as we're maturing the design and as we're getting ready to transition that design into the test program, which will start next year, and then into production so we can support deployment in the early 2030s."
The Sentinel missile was initially meant to begin deployment in 2029, but the program has been delayed and hit with cost overruns. Davies told KSL the program is now "progressing with intent and purpose" and that the company is transitioning to testing prototypes after developing digital models of the weapon system. Flight tests are expected to begin next year, according to Sarah Willoughby, vice president and general manager of strategic deterrent systems for Northrop Grumman.
"Those activities that we're doing now to prototype and demonstrate are giving us the confidence to move in to test next year and support our path to deliver this capability to the warfighter," Davies said.
Northrop Grumman already employs more than 11,000 Utahns across its facilities. The new building will expand the Roy Innovation Center's footprint to more than 1.1 million square feet of space to "accommodate hundreds more employees," Davies said. The building is expected to be finished in early 2028.
