By Ann Roosevelt
Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Raytheon [RTN] yesterday said they’ve formed a strategic partnership to contend for the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) Development and Sustainment Contract.
Over the years, the two companies have worked together on a number of missile defense programs.
“We have teamed on Aegis, we’ve teamed on THAAD, teamed on PAC 3, and what we’ve delivered is unparalleled,” Mathew Joyce, GMD vice president and program manager, Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co., said in a teleconference yesterday from Huntsville, Ala., where the team operations will be based.
Frank Wyatt, Raytheon vice president of Air and Missile Defense Systems, said as a team the two companies have brought more than 50 intercepts to the warfighters. And, since 1998, Raytheon has provided the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle for GMD interceptors.
MDA has said it plans this summer to issue the final request for proposals for the potential $600 million five-year contract that could expand to 10 years. The GMD Development and Sustainment Contract will entail development, manufacturing, test, training, operations support and sustainment support. An award is expected in 2011. In addition to Ft. Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg AFB, Calif., GMD development and sustainment contract work will be performed in Huntsville, Ala., Schriever AFB, Colo., and at Eareckson AS, Alaska.
The companies said they have a strategy to address MDA’s concerns about poor-quality missile defense products (Defense Daily, June 21).
“If you look back, there’s been some lessons learned on these programs and there were lessons learned that were incorporated and we look forward to the GMD [competition],” Joyce said. “We do have some strategies we’re going to bring to the table with regard to the MDA’s mission assurance provisions.”
Joyce declined to disclose those strategies as they would be part of their proposal.
Wyatt said, “To be very candid, we’ve learned a lot of hard lessons over those [past] five years, which is what we’re bringing forward not only into this contract but essentially every contract we touch with missile defense. [There’s a] very strong campaign within our business and across the industry in terms of attention to detail and making sure that not only our supply base completely understands the strategic importance of what we do every single day and how every single person’s attention to detail results in the performance of the weapons system.”
Other industry teams have announced they will participate in the competition. In June, Boeing [BA] and Northrop Grumman [NOC] announced a team to compete for the GMD work (Defense Daily, June 16). Boeing is the incumbent.
Lockheed Martin plans to add more members to the team in the next few weeks. In the past two months, Lockheed Martin revealed other team members NANA Development Corp., and Alaska Aerospace Corp. (Defense Daily, June 21, July 23).
As a strategic partner, Raytheon’s role will span systems engineering, development, manufacturing, testing, training and operations and sustainment at all of the key GMD sites.
“Raytheon brings important capabilities in manufacturing, mission assurance and readiness that will help to ensure a smooth transition in responding to the government’s needs for this critical national system,” Wyatt said.
Lockheed Martin and Raytheon’s credentials for GMD Development and Sustainment include more than 30 years of experience in missile defense development, production, testing and fielding, more than 50 years of experience in strategic weapon system operations and sustainment, and award-winning performance-based logistics expertise.