Approximately 1,000 employees at Lockheed Martin's Eagan facility learned the fate of their jobs on Thursday.

Roughly 250 jobs will be eliminated, while 750 positions will relocate during the next two years to other Lockheed facilities in Owego, New York; San Diego; and Manassas, Virginia.

When the company announced in November that it will close the facility by 2013, it anticipated the transfer of only 650 positions.

According to spokeswoman Peggy Mullikin, the earliest layoff date will be March 15, when about 100 jobs will be cut. The remaining layoffs will be staggered from then until the facility is shuttered.

The bulk of the 750 positions that will be transferred are engineers who work on communications systems for military ships and aircraft, as well as some program management employees.

The company also employs about 200 people in Eagan who work in civil air-traffic management, Mullikin said. Lockheed has not yet determined the future of those positions.

In November, the company said that its mission systems and sensors business will save an estimated $150 million during the next decade due to the closure of its Minnesota site. The company will offer relocation packages to transferred employees and severance options to those who will lose their jobs altogether.

Mullikin said that Lockheed intends to sell the 50-acre, 623,000-square-foot facility in Eagan.

Lockheed is based in Bethesda, Maryland, and its 2009 sales totaled about $44 billion. The company's Eagan facility makes mission-critical electronics for air, land, and shipboard military applications.