The following is an adaptation of a presentation given by Jack Cohen-Joppa at the Pacific Life Community retreat held in St. David, Arizona in March 2025 (published in the August 2025 issue of the Catholic Agitator, newsletter of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker).
THE WAR IN OUR BACKYARD
by Jack Cohen-Joppa
On the ancestral lands of the Western Apache and O’odham peoples, the United States is peddling war and death.
In fact, more than sunshine, saguaros and scenic vistas, more than copper, cattle, cotton, and citrus, the largest dollar-value export of things made in Tucson — and in fact in all of Arizona — is war and carnage. Most of that is weapons that come direct from Raytheon’s Tucson plants.
Here in southern Arizona, we have all been sold on and suckered into war. For more than four decades, this region has suckled on the profits of war, and it sucks.
The tools of empire are fabricated in our community only to be unleashed onto the world elsewhere. And not that this is anything unique to Tucson — we know how military money and prestige are sprinkled like candy or cocaine across congressional districts to addict voters everywhere. But this is our backyard, and living here so close to the border, we have long had front-row seats to some of the most horrific human costs of modern empire.
Negotiated in secrecy with city developers and power brokers, Howard Hughes built his aircraft company’s first factory here in 1951. The security chief at the new Hughes plant saw the biggest threat to the safety of the community coming not from within the plant but from the state’s “158 active Communists.” As to be expected, he was wrong.
For decades, industrial degreasing solvent trichloroethylene (or TCE) was dumped down the drain, flushed into the landscape and evaporated from unlined ponds, contaminating groundwater on Tucson’s south side, long-affecting legacy farms along with household and municipal wells. The cost to human and land health was great, and the largest burden for the cleanup has been held by the taxpayers.
Instead of owing restitution, Hughes Aircraft Company was offered millions in tax incentives to move more and more of their operations to Tucson. And since Hughes sold their missile business to Raytheon in 1997, the Air Force-owned property and infrastructure has since been leased to Raytheon for a nominal annual fee, stripping our community of even more support.
By the 1999 war against the former Yugoslavia, Raytheon and its local boosters were calling Tucson the “missile technology capital of the world.” Raytheon has been steadily growing their Tucson operations ever since, getting the region hooked on war more and more each year.
“We need to remove as many obstacles as possible that limit Raytheon’s ability to expand and bring more quality jobs to the region,” then-Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckleberry articulated.
And they have. Raytheon in Tucson now produces several air-to-air missiles (Sidewinder and AMRAAM), they make a variety of missile and gun systems for defending warships (Phalanx and Standard Missiles), they manufacture missile interceptors (Kinetic Kill Vehicles) and “smart” bombs that add Global Positioning Satellite-linked functions to standard aerial bombs (Paveway). The newest conventional Tomahawk cruise missile (Block IV) can deliver warheads like cluster munition options, can loiter for battle damage assessment and re-targeting capabilities, and has the ability to strike moving ships at sea. And the kicker — Raytheon is now ramping up production on their $16 billion contract producing the LRSO, or Long Range Stand-Off missile, nuclear armed and launched from airplanes. Their website touts production of a vast array of conventional weapons, but this threat to humanity is simply not mentioned.
It does not seem to matter that Raytheon/RTX was recently fined nearly $1 billion for defrauding the U.S. government (i.e., the taxpayer) for paying multiple bribes to promote business with the government of Qatar.
It does not seem to matter that Raytheon sells weapons of increasing sophistication to scores of nations, allies and enemies of U.S. allies alike, on every continent save Antarctica, including even some “undisclosed countries.”
Saudi Arabia is one of their biggest cash customers, and Raytheon weaponry has been found in the rubble of multiple attacks on civilians in Yemen. Raytheon technology destroyed vital water, electrical and sanitation infrastructure during the 1991 war on Iraq and bombarded Somalia, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Syria and more. Raytheon’s profits are only aided by the Russia/Ukraine war and the genocide in Gaza.
It is no surprise that they have earned distinction in some circles as the most successful at lobbying Congress among the largest military firms. After all, the last two Secretaries of Defense have been a Raytheon lobbyist and a Raytheon board member.
This is about more than profiting for the sake of security. Air Force Plant #44 is not simply a machine shop, dutifully filling government orders for a tidy profit. This is a corporation that has chosen to and succeeded in making profit for its investors from war. It is about commerce, not defense. In pursuit of profit, Raytheon engineers and managers spend their days imagining the warfare of the future.
And when 12,000 of our neighbors are employed by Raytheon to do research, development, and production, when the lifeline of this community has been forcibly tethered to this titan of death and destruction, when alternative industries and more critical analyses of what we are doing here are stifled, slandered, and criminalized, why would we think it would be any different?
Will Raytheon’s part in stoking conflicts, decimating infrastructure, devastating communities and killing people — causing generations of people across the globe to seek revenge — make our world and communities safer?
Has helping allies and their enemies pile up dead civilians and soldiers become the way we best leverage our incredible ingenuity and capacities? Is this how we honor our veterans, educate our children, care for our neighbors, and elevate local culture?
And for how long can we continue to develop our own community at such a great cost to others all around the world? And of course, this is not just the question Tucson has failed to ask, but our whole nation. Have you considered it?
Jack Cohen-Joppa has been co-coordinator, along with his wife Felice, of The Nuclear Resister since 1980 – https://www.nukeresister.org/.