MONTGOMERY -- Alabama -- Gov. Robert Bentley and a delegation from the state leave Sunday for a four-day industry hunting trip to Germany with an eye on getting Airbus suppliers to locate in Alabama.  

Bentley, Secretary of Commerce Greg Canfield and a delegation from Mobile will attend the Aviation Forum in Hamburg.  

"We're so excited that Airbus is coming. Now we want the suppliers to come to Alabama also," Bentley said.

"I'm going to spend about four days in Germany talking to that group and trying to encourage them to come to Alabama," Bentley said. 

Airbus announced this summer that it would construct a $600 million, 1,000-worker aircraft assembly plant in Mobile, giving the European company its first production site on U.S. soil. Alabama put together an incentive package of more than $150 million in cash, tax breaks and other incentives to help lure the project. 

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Lawrence, Raytheon's vice president and president of its Missile Systems business, is an Alabama native. He grew up in Montevallo, just south of Birmingham and though his education and later his job took him out west, he said he's glad to be back in his home state for the opening of the new 70,000 square-foot, $100 million facility on Redstone Arsenal.

"We went through a very vigorous approach when we looked for places that had the right footprint for this facility," Lawrence said. "Redstone Arsenal emerged because of the land they had available. We needed a large buffer zone because we're working with a lot of firepower there. We worked with the local leaders, state leaders and the leaders at Redstone Arsenal and they put together a very good plan."

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Published this month, the report shows the state's leading research schools -- the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Auburn University and the University of Alabama at Huntsville -- garnered $406.9 million from federal research grants in 2009, the latest year available for analysis.

That's a year-over-year increase of $2 million compared to a $5.5 million increase the year before. Federal funding is the indicator most consistently used to measure institutional performance among research universities, according to the center.  

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby will be on Redstone Arsenal today to help cut the ribbon for Raytheon's new 70,000 square-foot missile integration and test facility. 

The first SM-6, an extended range anti-air warfare missile, is expected to be ready by February 2013. It provides over-the-horizon capabilities against fixed and rotary-wing aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and cruise missiles. The first SM-3 is expected in the second quarter of the year.

The SM-3 is part of the MDA's sea-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system. They are used by the U.S. and Japanese navies to defend against short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles.