The move, which ATK announced Friday at a news conference attended by Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, means that all of the company's three existing business groups are now run from Utah.

"ATK Ammunition Systems group has operations across the country, from coast to coast and north to south," said Mark DeYoung, group president. "When we looked at the map it just made sense to us that our headquarters should be in a central location - one with easy access to an international airport. Utah was ideal."

The new headquarters also is near one of the group's major customers - the Air Logistic Command Center at Hill Air Force Base.

Utah already is home to ATK Launch Systems, which produces the solid-fuel rocket motors used on the space shuttle, and the company's Mission Systems group, which develops and manufacturers space and satellite systems such as solar arrays and antennas.

Those two groups last year generated about 64 percent of ATK's $3.5 billion in annual sales.

ATK's Ammunition Systems group last year generated more than $1.2 billion in annual sales, or about 36 percent of the revenue generated by its Edina, Minn.-based parent company, Alliant Techsystems Inc.

The group is the largest supplier of ammunition in the world, DeYoung said. It also is the only manufacturer of medium-caliber cannons - chain guns - that are used as armament on Apache helicopters, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and other military fighting platforms.

About 6,000 people are employed by the ammunitions group at manufacturing facilities in Virginia, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Arizona, Idaho and California. They produce both military and commercial ammunition.

"Obviously, they've been doing a lot of business supplying ammunition for the war in Iraq and military training," said Troy Lahr, a Baltimore-based securities analyst who follows Alliant Techsystems for Stifel Nicolaus brokerage. "And the past few years they've also done a good job expanding in the sport and civil law enforcement markets."

DeYoung said the relocation of the Ammunition System group's headquarters to Clearfield means 15 additional ATK vice presidents and directors now are based in the state.

Alliant's three operating groups combined employ approximately 5,600 Utahns, representing a payroll in the state of more than $370 million.

"The ATK Ammunition System headquarters will have a relatively modest head count, but it means the business that leads every major ammunition market in the country will call Utah home," a company statement said.

steve@sltrib.com