Lockheed Martin [LMT] on Monday announced the opening of a new advanced production facility in Courtland, Ala., dedicated to help building hypersonic strike capabilities.
The company said the new 65,000-square foot Hypersonic Missile Assembly building will make use of new “digital factory” technologies to work on programs such as the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS), Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) and the Air Force’s Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon.
“Lockheed Martin has manufactured defense systems in Courtland since 1994, providing increasingly sophisticated capabilities to protect our nation, allies, and security partners,” Sarah Hiza, Lockheed Martin Space’s vice president of strategic and missile defense systems, said in a statement. “Our long-time partnerships with Alabama, the Department of Defense, and academic researchers have paved the way to develop the most advanced hypersonic strike capabilities using the best-of-the-best digital technologies from across our enterprise.”
The new facility is the second building in Lockheed Martin’s Courtland complex dedicated to CPS production, according to the company, noting the new location “integrates critical digital transformation advancements such as robotic thermal protection application capabilities, smart torque tools and mixed-reality capabilities for training and virtual inspections.”
“The machines in this facility also will connect to the company’s Intelligent Factory Framework early next year, which digitally links production facilities and assets across the Lockheed Martin enterprise to help enable unprecedented insights into the health, status and optimization of operations,” the company wrote in a statement.
In March, Lockheed Martin was awarded a $1.5 billion contract modification for the joint Army-Navy program to develop a common rocket and hypersonic glide vehicle for the services’ respective LRHW and CPS programs, raising the total program value to $2.8 billion (Defense Daily, March 12).