A defense contractor with a presence in Daviess County has landed a five-year, multi-million dollar contract.
Alion Science and Technology has landed a $292-million task order to develop and repair equipment for the Air Force and Army. The work is going through the engineering department at Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center and that means much of the work will be done in Daviess County.
“Alion is a private defense contract specializing in big data, cybernetics, artificial intelligence and electronic warfare for the defense and intelligence communities,” said Alion Vice President of Marketing Colleen Campbell. “We are experiencing incredible growth. We’ve had some big wins this past year. One of which was this contract.”
Officials describe the equipment involved as fixed and mobile base security and surveillance systems that keep and eye out and help protect the troops.
The contract includes a continuation of work Alion was already doing at Crane. Much of that work is in its facilities located in the Daviess County portion of the WestGate @ Crane Technology Park.
“We’ve been at Crane for the better part of a decade,” said Jim Armstrong with Alion. “We’ve moved facilities four times and now have a 57,000 square foot campus out there that completely supports Crane.
What we are doing there is mostly DOD related sustainment and development for ISR and related electronic warfare systems. This one is the force protection division.”
The work under the latest task order will include repairing and upgrading surveillance equipment that has been used before as well as working on designing better systems.
“We were already doing a lot of force protection work for the army, so it is going to be a follow-up for the 60 people that work on the program. There are some government employees and a couple of other companies involved,” said Dino Cencetti with Alion. “We do expect to see some local growth as the contract continues to grow.” That means the company will be looking to add to its already technical leaning staff.
“We are always looking for good help, people with engineering and technical backgrounds, logisticians, data,” said Cencetti. “We need people in all of the jobs that fit design and sustainment of systems.”
Alion and many of the technical firms at Crane and WestGate often work collaboratively on their projects and this project will also include involvement of other firms. They call it part of what could become even more growth at Crane.
“We’ve had a pretty good track record of bringing and relocation of projects into the area,” said Cencetti. “We continue to work with the universities and robotics clubs to get the students and up and coming engineers meaningful work in the area.”
They note that the $292 million contract could continue that. “If this contract goes as planned, and it should,” said Cencetti, “at the end we will have a robust capability to do this kind of work for both legacy (used) and new systems. It will allow more external mission partners to maybe bring more work to Crane and that could produce something good down the road.”
© 2025 Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.