With larger companies, the center spent $895 million last fiscal year, down from nearly $1.3 billion in fiscal 2023.
The Air Force Research Laboratory spent $412 million with small Ohio businesses in fiscal 2024, down from $421 million the previous fiscal year.
With larger Ohio businesses, AFRL spent $291 million in fiscal 2024, down from $427 million in the previous fiscal year.
The Dayton Development Coalition has tracked spending by the Life Cycle Management Center since 2018 and AFRL since at least 2013. Both missions are based at Wright-Patterson.
The data comes directly from the missions themselves.
Having the headquarters of these critical missions close by is important, said Jeff Hoagland, president and chief executive of the coalition.
Headquarters locations matter, he maintains. Spending tends to gravitate around those centers of leadership, and business leaders make their own location decisions based in part on where three- and four-star generals go to work.
“Proximity matters, and I think that’s one reason why Ohio continues to do well,” Hoagland said.
Spending by businesses within counties shows that, he said.
Tracking “total dollars by place of performance,” AFRL spending in Greene County reached nearly $450 million in fiscal 2024. Montgomery County saw about $180 million of spending that year, according to base data shared with the coalition.
Among obligations to businesses by state, Ohio is second only to Virginia as a beneficiary of AFRL spending. (The Pentagon is located in Arlington, Va.)
Wright-Patterson has long been recognized as a powerful economic engine. The base is the largest employer in one location in the state of Ohio. Last year, community leaders celebrated an employment milestone at the base — 38,000 military and civilian employees, a doubling of the base’s working population in the two decades since the last Base Realignment and Closure Process, which moved missions around in a way that boosted Wright-Patterson and the Dayton area.
Last year, the base put its overall annual economic impact at $4.2 billion.
Hoagland estimated that Air Force Materiel Command — under which both the Life Cycle Management Center and AFRL operate — controls 40% or more of the overall Air Force budget.
Wright-Patterson covers more than 8,000 acres, or 12.5 square miles, supporting more than 100 units working on the base.
Wright-Patt has dual runways, supporting an average of 11,000 aircraft operations every year.
“We have to focus our time on keeping the missions here, growing the missions here,” Hoagland said.
About the Author
