New generation of weapons

While many businesses are battening the hatches in the face of global economic uncertainty, a Mesa defense contractor is hiring and gearing up for a major expansion.

Alliant Techsystems, which for decades has made the venerable Bushmaster cannons onboard Apache Longbow helicopters, is expanding its product line.

The company, which bought the Mesa business from Boeing in 2002, has won a $53 million contract to manufacture crew-operated machine guns for the U.S. Army.

The new contract to manufacture the MK19 40-mm grenade machine represents a big opportunity for the company.

"It's a totally new product that we've never produced before," said Jim Cates, vice president and general manager of Alliant's Mesa-based Medium Caliber Systems unit.

The company will build a new manufacturing facility over the next 15 months to produce the guns and initially will hire 15 new workers.

Alliant currently employs about 200 people in Mesa, building Bushmaster chain guns for the U.S. and foreign militaries.

Cates is optimistic the new contract could lead to additional work on similar weapons.

"The program is administered by a different area than our Bushmaster chain guns, and it opens up customer access we never had before," he said.

Alliant, also known as ATK, is sharing the contract with FN Manufacturing of Columbia, S.C.

The terms of the agreement call for Alliant to manufacture the barrels and assemble the guns in Mesa with components produced and shipped to Arizona by FN.

The MK19 is a belt-fed gun that is powered by pressurized gas and fires 375 to 400 rounds per minute. The weapon is operated by a crew member, as opposed to the Bushmaster cannons, which are fired remotely.

Alliant's signature Bushmaster chain guns were initially developed by Hughes Helicopters to be integrated with the Apache Helicopter it developed for the U.S. Army in the 1970s.

The MK19 machine guns have been in production since the 1960s and lately have been exclusively produced by General Dynamics Corp.

Cates said the Army recently decided to add an additional supplier of the guns and selected the Alliant and FN partnership to do the work.

The Alliant unit in Mesa currently manufactures 25mm through 40mm variants of its Bushmaster cannons and oversees the out-of-state production of more than 8 million rounds of medium-caliber ammunition per year.

Minneapolis-based Alliant is a major aerospace and defense company with more than 17,000 employees in 21 states and about $4.6 billion in revenue.

FN Manufacturing produces small arms for the U.S. military and law-enforcement agencies. It is a subsidiary of Belgian gun maker FN Herstal S.A.

Roy Hochstedler puts a serial number on a cannon at Alliant in Mesa.