I’ve been here almost 55 years.” It’s so amazing to meet people like that. He’s just
one of several that I’ve met that have really been excited about the work that we
do, knowing that we serve such key mission in supporting our war fighter, not
just for the U.S., but really across the globe.
Another thing that excited me about this business unit, the C-130J, which is
our latest version of the C-130 Hercules, is certainly a dominant aircraft in the
tactical mobility market. And as I’ve had a chance to speak to the customers
and engage with them to understand what is the customer’s perspective of the
product, overwhelmingly they have said “We are significantly pleased with the
C-130J,” and, “The only thing that can replace a Hercules is another Hercules.”
Q: Am I correct to say it’s the oldest, longest-produced military aircraft of
all time?
A: Yeah, the longest-produced military aircraft. Almost 65 years. And
although their frame may look the same, we’ve continued to provide avionics
updates and modernization opportunities for the Hercules and even today,
the C-130J, significant improvement in reliability, maintaining building availability
and also a range of performance because of the improvements in the
engine technology and the avionics and the modern technology we brought
into the aircraft.
The C-130 is the heart of Marietta. It has been the heart. We’re going to
continue to produce the airplane for years to come. We are in the process now
of finalizing a multi-year contract, which will continue to modernize the U.S.
Air Force and U.S. Coast Guard aircraft, as well as the special operation forces.
So we still see opportunities well into the future for new production programs
and also sustaining those airplanes. We’ve delivered over 2,000-plus airplanes to
date, and our sustainment role, we look to continue to partner with not only our
domestic customer, but also our international partners to ensure that they can
sustain, operate, maintain the aircraft for as long as they desire.
That’s still one of the challenges, too — we have some that are over 50 years
old and they’re still flying, and so they’re still part of the fleet. We’re starting to
see some users recapitalize and buy new, and there’s some that continued to
modernize the airplanes that they have.
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In addition, we still are supporting the C-5 aircraft, which is a strategic airlift
airplane. Feedback is once again very positive as well, as we had a program to
re-engine the airplane and also provide an avionics upgrade, and the feedback
once again from the customers that were ecstatic about the improvements,
because now when we go out to operate the airplane, it’s available, it can support
the mission requirements, and with the improved engines, they have more
range available now than what they had before.
Lockheed Martin has been very fortunate to win several new development
programs out of our Advanced Development Program (ADP) organization.
Historically, that really has been the engine of many of our exciting
technologies and exciting aircraft that have come out of Lockheed Martin.
The F-22, for example, was built out of our ADP organization prototypes,
and then when we needed to go to large-scale production, we brought that
work to Marietta. And there’ve been several new programs that Lockheed
Martin Aeronautics, we’ve won, that are in that C-development stage out of
skunkworks, ADP, to the point that we’ve now brought even ADP engineers
to Marietta, because we recognize that we need to source talent from not
just California, but also Fort Worth and also Georgia and all the regional
schools that we have here.
So we’re certainly reaching out to the community, bringing in new talent
to support many of the new programs that we have won that are in the early
stages of development, and at some point we’ll prototype those airplanes,
demonstrate they can achieve their mission requirements and then produce
those in large scale. We’re in the process now of doing that planning to
determine how they’ll fit in the Marietta facility, and still, it is a competition
within Aeronautics as to where their work will go. So we’re taking the steps
now to try to be as efficient as possible, reduce our footprint to represent
ourselves as a very affordable, affordable location and the site of choice
to produce these airplanes. At some point in the future, we’ll make those
down-selects and say where will we produce that next airplane or that next
vehicle. Because it’s a combination of certainly manned, and unmanned,
that we are in the early phases of development.
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