Since launching a new strategy three years ago to surge Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] adoption of commercial technologies to enhance its solutions for its Defense Department and international customers, the company is looking to expand this effort around its production capacity and resiliency, James Taiclet, chairman, president, and CEO, said on Monday.
The first expansion of the 21st Century Security vision is in the area of strengthening the supply chain to be more resilient and to rapidly scale, Taiclet said during the company’s second quarter earnings call.
In June, Lockheed Martin and New York-based semiconductor manufacturer Global Foundries (GF) began a strategic collaboration to incentivize the domestic semiconductor supply gain in part by using GF’s chips for defense applications. Partnerships like this will “ensure access to ‘Made in America’ microelectronics for our platforms and systems,” Taiclet said.
The second area is to bolster “international production and sustainment operations,” he said, highlighting investments the company has made in Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany and potentially Poland.
“So, we’re going to continue to expand internationally to make sure we have a resilient supply chain and we have sustainment operations where our customers can use them to deter future conflict around the world,” Taiclet said.
In February, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman [NOC] and Germany’s Rheinmetall signed a letter of intent for the German company to become a second supplier for F-35 fighter aircraft center fuselages in Germany, expanding production capacity. Rheinmetall is slated to begin producing the fuselages in 2025.
Taiclet launched 21st Century Security shortly after taking the helm at Lockheed Martin in June 2020 and began building digital technology partnerships with commercial companies in areas like 5G.MIL, artificial intelligence and distributed cloud. The company has already achieved successes and begun to generate revenue from these efforts, he said during the earnings call.
During the DoD’s Northern Edge joint military exercise this spring, Lockheed Martin showcased its 21st Century Security “digital technology architecture” as part of Indo-Pacific Command’s joint fires network by demonstrating “digital command and control, or C2, to synchronize joint all domain operations” near Alaska, he said.
“The exercise demonstrated the ability to successfully integrate with both Lockheed Martin and third-party platforms and aircraft, including F 35s,” he said. “The system performed C2 functions across all the military services, all levels of operation and across multiple domains from space to air to surface. This is the first time joint force synchronization has been demonstrated at this scale. It was a major milestone for all joint all domain command and control interoperability and our company’s vision for 21st Century Security.”