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Lockheed CEO touts adaptiveness
(Dallas Morning News, The (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Apr. 25--Lockheed Martin Corp. may be best known for its multibillion-dollar and multiyear fighter jet programs, such as the F-16 and F-35, both built in Fort Worth.
But Bob Stevens, president, chairman and chief executive of the Maryland-based defense giant, said during a visit to Arlington on Thursday that those huge contracts don't mean Lockheed is slow to adapt to new challenges. The ability to respond quickly is critical when U.S. soldiers are fighting enemies who change their tactics daily, he said.
"If you have combat forces forward deployed, they're experiencing real-time exposures and threats to their well being," Mr. Stevens said. "Well, that goes right to the very top of your priority list."
Lockheed Martin has about 20,000 employees in Dallas-Fort Worth. That includes the aeronautics division based in Fort Worth, where work is ramping up on the nearly $300 billion F-35 program, and the Missiles and Fire Control segment in Grand Prairie.
Here are excerpts from a conversation with Mr. Stevens, who was in town for Lockheed Martin's annual shareholders meeting.
With a new U.S. president coming into office next year, are you concerned about defense budget cuts?
I don't believe that in any wholesale fashion there will [be cuts], and the reason I say that is the sense that we have and I think the sense that others have of the demands in the global security environment. And I think those demands do require investment. And I think those investments are a prudent application of resources to protect a $14 trillion economy and 300 million American citizens.
The military conflicts the U.S. has been involved in since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have involved largely unconventional forces with rapidly changing tactics, rather than large, conventional militaries. Has Lockheed had to adjust its business methods because of that?
It has changed our design philosophy as we think about new systems. We think about systems with open architectures. We think about systems where the core capability of the system is designed to be highly durable and last a long time, and the features that are built into that system ought to be easily replaceable, easily upgradeable.
Take a look at the Joint Strike Fighter program today. It is the model of the use of information technology in an open architecture in an extensible system that we believe is going to be around 50 years. But it doesn't look and it doesn't perform like any other airplane ever.
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