Sierra Nevada Corp. will open a third hangar at the Dayton International Airport days from now, and the aerospace and national security firm expects to open a fourth facility early next year.
The state of Ohio earlier this year awarded more than $78 million to help expand a growing aerospace and defense campus at the Dayton airport.
“Approximately 9,000 jobs have been created on land around the airport over the past ten years, including jobs at companies like P&G, Amazon, Chewy, Crocs, etc.,” said Melissa Riley Patsiavos, marketing and air services development director with the Dayton department of aviation. “With the expansion of airport infrastructure, we anticipate creating about 4,000 more jobs in the next ten years.”
The Dayton City Commission recently approved a $150,000 agreement with the FAA to study relocating an airport surveillance radar facility that the federal agency owns.
According to aviation director Turner’s memo, no structures can be erected within 1,500 feet of the radar tower facility, which is located along Old Springfield Road, northwest of the commercial airport facility.
The tower, which is surrounded by undeveloped farm and grass land, is down the road from Sierra Nevada’s maintenance, repair and operations facilities.
Sierra Nevada’s Dayton operations site is expected to add about 150 jobs. The firm currently has 220 employees at its Dayton airport facilities, which are called the Aviation Innovation and Technology Center. Sierra Nevada, which says hiring is ongoing, also has offices in Beavercreek and Miamisburg.
Sierra Nevada is interested in expanding at the northwest end of the airport, said Mark Williams, the company’s site executive for Dayton operations. For that to happen, infrastructure in the area needs to be expanded and replaced or repaired, he said.
“New facilities in the northwest end of the airport could impede with the airport radar and would need to be relocated to avoid interference from the new facilities,” Williams said.
Sierra Nevada’s first state-of-the-art hangar in Dayton opened in 2023. The second opened in the fall of 2024 and the company broke ground on two additional facilities at that time. Each hangar is about 90,000 square feet.
Credit: Jim Noelker
Credit: Jim Noelker
Last year, the U.S. Air Force awarded Sierra Nevada a $13 billion contract to modernize and deliver a replacement for the Air Force’s current aging fleet of E-4B “Nightwatch” aircraft, which were built to be an airborne command center that maintains functionality through a nuclear attack or other emergencies.
Sierra Nevada has been flight- and ground-testing the new “Survivable Airborne Operations Center” in Dayton. The aircraft is famously nicknamed the “doomsday plane.”
The Dayton International Airport and a couple of partners a few months ago were awarded about $78 million in state grant funding that is expected to help prepare 150 acres of city-owned land for future development projects in the aerospace and defense industry. The plan is to install concrete for a new apron east of Dog Leg Road, south of Old Springfield Road.
The new apron project will take place over several years and several phases and is not dependent on the relocation of the radar facilities, aviation officials said.
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