NORTHAMPTON — Defense contracting firm L3 KEO has shuttered its machine shop in Brattleboro, Vermont, but staffing levels at its Northampton headquarters are unimpacted, the company said Wednesday.

The Brattleboro plant’s closing leaves 15 people without jobs, said Jennifer Barton, spokeswoman for the firm’s New York-based parent company, L3 Technologies Inc., in a statement.

“This was a difficult but necessary decision in our ongoing effort to streamline business operations and achieve operational efficiencies,” Barton said of the closing, effective Monday. “The affected personnel will receive a severance package, extended medical coverage and outplacement assistance.”

L3 KEO employs 547 people at locations in Northampton, Pittsburgh, and Bologna and Milan, Italy, according to the company. Barton said the Northampton headquarters currently employs about 258 people.

In 2015, the company landed a $48.7 million contract to build a new, slimmer version of its periscope-like device that makes U.S. submarines less recognizable. The company also builds ship fire control systems, visual landing aids and ground electro-optical and sensor-cueing systems.

When the contract was announced, Matthew Richi, president of L3 KEO, told the Gazette the five-year contract would position the company for “moderate growth” into the next five years. Richi said most of the work would be out of Northampton but that some would be completed out of its Brattleboro location.

Barton did not directly say how the Brattleboro closing would impact the contracted work, only to say that there would be “no change to KEO’s operations in Northampton.”

L3 KEO is located on the south campus of Village Hill Northampton off Route 66. In 2011, then-Kollmorgen Electro-Optical moved its 340 employees to the new location.

In December 2011, L3 Communications announced it would purchase Kollmorgen from Danaher Corp. for $210 million.

On Dec. 6, 2016, L3 Communications announced it would change its name to L3 Technologies Inc. The parent company of L3 KEO said then “the new name capitalizes on L-3’s strong brand equity, while better reflecting the Company’s evolution into a leading global provider of a broad range of technology solutions.”

In the same news release, the publicly-traded company said it employed 38,000 people worldwide with 2015 sales totaling $10.5 billion.

Contact Jack Suntrup at jsuntrup@gazettenet.com.