Advice for moving on from Defense

I'm currently working for lockheed as a systems engineer. I'm from the city, but this place is in the middle of nowhere. I accepted this job because I was right out of grad school with a masters and was looking for a good place to start. After a 2-3 years, I think I've gotten all I'm going to get out of my current job and find my current job rather boring and am learning little related to my interests. I like the high level nature of systems engineering, but I think I am too high of a level current since we are fairly late in the program so there is no real development work left. I would like to move on and am looking for some tips.

I'd really like to move to a better location somewhere in the north east. However I'm not really familiar with many of the engineering companies in the Northeast. Especially the smaller ones.

My raises are decent (2-4%) for the lockheed (and perhaps the defense industry as a whole) but overall I feel my benefits and raises are far less than in other similar industries.

I'm not learning too many new things related to more current technologies or things that I am interested in. I feel like the longer I stay here, the more I will forget (from what I learned in college). I think this is why people say it is hard to get out of the defense industry.

I'd appretiate any tips, thanks.

Also just to clarify, I don't necesarily want to get out of defense but I want to keep my options open. The commercial industry seems to provide better salary and benefits at the cost of less job security.