A PAE company based in Forth Worth, Texas will provide the Naval Air Warfare Center with range engineering, operations and maintenance services on a new contract worth more than $23 million.

PAE Applied Technologies will support the center’s Atlantic Targets and Marine Operations division within its Aircraft division over more than a Pentagon-estimated 270,000 man hours.

The cost-plus-fixed-fee contract exercises an option for the work which the Defense Department believes will wrap up in November 2013.

Navy capital funds are obligated and funding at least some of the work, while the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division in Patuxent River, Md, is the contracting activity.