Northrop Grumman Inks 168K-SF Renewal Near San Diego

Aerospace and defense companies are surging across Southern California, and one of the federal government’s largest contractors has just made clear that it’s not leaving the region anytime soon. 

Northrop Grumman, which collected nearly $42 billion in revenue in 2025, according to its latest earnings report, renewed its 168,072-square-foot, full-campus lease at Drawbridge Realty’s Via Del Campo near San Diego. Northrop Grumman has occupied the two-building office and research and development site at 16710 and 16750 Via Del Campo Court since 2005. The length of the firm’s new lease agreement was not immediately clear. 

JLL’s Randall Wood and Shawn Lorentzen represented Northrop Grumman and CBRE’s Tom Martinez, Chris Pascale, Evan Knudson and Cole Martinez represented Drawbridge. The landlord purchased the complex for $26 million in 2014, according to reports at the time. 

Southern California, and Los Angeles County’s South Bay in particular, is the veritable home of the nation’s aerospace and defense industries — a title that the region is quickly regaining after decades of decline. Santa Ana-based Anduril Industries is one of the biggest players, having recently announced plans for a $1 billion mixed-use campus in Long Beach, alongside the hundreds of thousands of square feet it owns and leases (partially from Drawbridge) in Orange County. 

Other, more boutique firms are dog fighting for space, too. Trio Manufacturing tripled its square footage last May to over 123,000 square feet in El Segundo, and Flightwave Aerospace likewise tripled its footprint in October to about 51,000 square feet in Torrance. The previous month, the Bill Gates-backed Heart Aerospace inked a 30,000-square-foot lease roughly three miles east of Flightwave’s new digs. 

Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.