Lockheed Martin

History

Both the Lockheed and Martin corporations were founded in 1912, and both were historically responsible for a number of notable defense and aerospace projects throughout the past century, including planes such as the B-26 bomber, the Space Race–era Titan rocket program, the SR-71 Blackbird, the Manned Maneuvering Unit, and the ill-fated Mars Climate Rover (which failed on landing in 1998 due to Lockheed’s use of American measurement units instead of the metric units specified by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Lockheed Martin was also heavily involved in contracting for the space shuttle program throughout its existence at National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The Contemporary Era

Currently, the major profit-generating products from Lockheed are defense systems, electronic systems, cyber security, and weaponry, while the company’s Space Systems division has suffered from a drastic loss of product sales. Lockheed’s most profitable programs include the F-35, F-16, tactical missile programs such as the Hellfire, the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS), the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, and electronics and cyber security systems. An increasingly large portion of Lockheed’s service sales now come from the Electronic Systems division.

One of Lockheed’s major recent programs is the F-35 Lightning II, one of the world’s most highly advanced fighter planes. The F-35 was conceived in the mid-1990s and was part of a multinational project that included the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and a number of other North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries and U.S. allies. The F-35 now also has two international customers, the Japanese and Israeli air forces, and the United States government alone has ordered more than 2,000 F-35s, with deliveries beginning in mid-2012. The project was planned to replace the less effective and less versatile F-22 fighter but has not been without its share of controversy, with the current price of the aircraft double the initial planned price in 2001 and a number of recent technical glitches requiring more federal money to solve. The F-35 was a significant factor in Lockheed’s net aeronautics sales of $14.4 billion in 2011.

Recently, Lockheed Martin successfully launched a Next Generation Identification System for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Space Based Infrared System (which provides a defense system in case of missile attack), GPS technology for the Federal Aviation Administration, the Juno spacecraft sent to Jupiter, the GRAIL spacecraft sent to the moon, and the Persistent Threat Detection System and K-MAX unmanned cargo aircraft system, both currently in use in coalition operations in Afghanistan.

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