OKC company in 'hiring frenzy' as it gears up to help design new U.S. Navy doomsday plane
Long Wave is a subcontractor for Northrop Grumman on the project, which will result in 10% of the contract — $350 million — being paid out to the Oklahoma City company with work likely to continue beyond the initial six-year term.
Chris Lozano, chief marketing officer of Long Wave, said the company started expanding its office space in Midtown and warehouse north of the state Capitol in November as it began to realize the Northrop Grumman team was likely to win the bid to design and build the E-130J. The plane will replace the E-6B Mercury used by the Navy's TACAMO (Take Charge and Move Out) mission.
'This is the largest contract we've ever been awarded,' Lozano said. 'The company operates at around $30 million a year and it's been like that for the past decade. When you add a big contract like this, it triples the size of the company.'
The TACAMO mission provides connectivity between the National Command Authority and U.S. nuclear forces across the globe. In addition to Long Wave, the Northrop Grumman team includes Lockheed Martin, Skunk Works, Raytheon and Crescent Systems.
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The E-130J is part of the United States' nuclear modernization program, which includes new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, new bomber aircraft such as the B-21 Raider, and Sentinel, a new ground-based system to replace the silo-based Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The E-130J is referred to as a doomsday plane because it is intended to ensure U.S. leadership can always communicate with nuclear forces to order or cancel strikes, even if ground-based communications are unavailable.
Oklahoma City's ties to the U.S. Navy dates to when the TACAMO mission was centralized at Tinker Air Force Base in 1992. Long Wave was founded three years later at Tinker by the late Phil Miller. Long Wave's first project with TACAMO provided a low frequency analysis that supported the connectivity with the nation's submarine force.
TACAMO retirees accounted for about a third of Long Wave's workforce prior to the E-130J contract award.
'We recruit heavily from that community,' Lozano said. 'I used to fly with that community. I know these guys and ladies really well. When the cream of the crops are about to retire, we're one of the first stops they make on their job tour to see if they can work for us.'
Lozano said the new project is transforming the company from a small to large business, which is the sort of economic growth being pursued by state and local economic development agencies.
'We are in a hiring frenzy right now,' Lozano said. 'Prior to the award, we had about 120 employees. We're up to 155 and we still need another hundred. We hope to be up to 250 by the end of 2025. These are systems software and electrical engineers.'
Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell, one of several state officials working with Long Wave on its expansion, said the company is likely to qualify for quality jobs and engineering incentives.
'The aerospace and defense industry is in the center of our strategy to diversify our economy,' Pinnell said. 'We love it when we're getting phone calls from businesses that want to relocate to Oklahoma, but it's even better when we have companies grow from a couple of employees to hundreds.'
The Oklahoma Department of Commerce reports the aerospace and defense industry is the state's second-largest and fastest-growing industry with a $44 billion annual economic impact.
Pinnell said he expects Oklahoma's defense-related employment to continue to grow based on weekly discussions with the industry and observations of growth taking place in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Lawton and elsewhere in the state.
'This industry has grown so rapidly that we now have a defense industry association in Oklahoma that was formed over the past few years,' Pinnell said. 'It's not only diversifying our economy, it's helping statewide growth.'
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OKC's Long Wave hiring dozens of engineers to design doomsday plane
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