No. 23: Kitsap County, Wash.

Located on the western shore of Puget Sound, Kitsap County, Wash., measuresonly 393 square miles and is the third-smallest of Washington's 38 counties.But it is the second most densely populated county ? with slightly more than240,000 residents ? and home to Naval Base Kitsap, the area's major defenseinstallation.The Kitsap facility was created in 2004 by the merger of Naval StationBremerton and Naval Submarine Base Bangor. With installations remaining inboth towns and in Keyport, Wash., Naval Base Kitsap is now the largest navalfacility in the Northwest.In addition, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard is the largest shipyard on the WestCoast. The government presence in the area was large enough to rank thecounty No. 23, with 27,497 military and civilian jobs.The shipyard could grow larger as a result of the 2005 BRAC recommendations,which call for closing the Naval Shipyard Portsmouth, N.H., and relocatingits ship repair function to Puget Sound.Those naval facilities and the area's temperate climate make Kitsap popularwith military retirees, said Kathy Cocus, interim executive director at theKitsap Economic Development Alliance. "That means [contractors] havepotential access to a lot of retired military ? mostly Navy, but other branchesalso."The retirees know how DOD and the military services work, she said, andmany of them have security clearances they would bring to a contractor seekingto hire locally.The top DOD contractors in Kitsap are BAE Systems Inc. with about 400employees, Lockheed Martin Corp. with 375, and Northrop Grumman Corp.with slightly more than 300 employees, according to KEDA.Cocus said Puget Sound federal contractors are neither as visible nor asactive in the life of the community as they are in the Washington, D.C., area."It varies," she said, based on their size and the contracts they're working on.The county has about 15,000 federal government employees, she said.