Northern Ireland has been designing and manufacturing some of the world's most sophisticated defence weapons for more than 40 years and the industry currently supports more than 550 jobs in the North.
The key player in the sector is French-owned group Thales Air Defence, formerly known as Shorts Missile Systems. It recently predicted business would at least double over the next 12 months - even before the attack by Islamic fundamentalists in the United States.
Mr Terry Stone, chief executive of Thales Air Defence, has said he expects the group to grow its business from its 1999 sales of £60 million sterling (€95.8 million) to £120 million by next year.
There is a long tradition of excellence in the defence sector in the North.
When Thales acquired Shorts Missile Systems at the beginning of last year, it bought one of the oldest missile companies in the world.
In its previous incarnation, the company introduced the first missile in service to the British navy in the early 1960s.
The Northern Ireland business is now part of a global group that has operations in more than 30 countries and 65,000 employees worldwide.
Since Thales acquired the former Shorts company, its Belfast division has won more than £100 million of new business, mainly from the Ministry of Defence in Britain.
Thales's latest contract was a £66 million order from the Ministry of Defence for air defence systems.
According to Mr Stone, the Thales operation in Northern Ireland specialises in the design, development and manufacture of missiles. He said the group's mission statement is "counter defence". "Our core business is electronics and how we apply it to various different applications.
"Our specialism here in Belfast is air defence and our particular specialty within that is missiles," Mr Stone said.
It is estimated the Northern Ireland operation has supplied more than 60,000 missiles to 56 armed forces across the globe in the past 40 years.
Two of its best known products include the Starstreak missile, which was used in the United Operation in Kosovo in 1999 and the Starburst system, which was used by British forces during the Gulf War.
