Lockheed Martin Research Papers

Lockheed Martin is a multibillion-dollar corporation with global interests, which primarily provides security solutions in the form of aeronautical platforms. Lockheed's many divisions work in unison to design, manufacture and provide maintenance support for their various platforms (Lockheedmartin.com, 2015). In essence, it is a one-stop shop for solving a country's need to provide security for its citizens.
Since its inception in 1995, Lockheed Martin Corporation has grown its assets to become #196 on the Forbes list of the world's top 2000 public companies. With over $64 billion in assets and more the $45 billion in sales, Lockheed Martin is truly a major player on the world business stage (Erb, Avenue, Chen & Shin, 2015).
Lockheed Martin

Even with the large amount of negative press, the US and allied military commands support the program. The purpose of the F-35 is to replace the aging fleet of combat aircraft in the US Air Force, Navy and Marine Corp. The three versions replace the Air Force's F-16, the Navy F-18 and the Marine Harrier jets (Lockheedmartin.com, 2015). The key selling point of the F-35 is versatility; there are three distinct versions of the airframe Conventional Takeoff and Landing (CTOL), Short Takeoff Vertical Landing (STOVL) and Carrier Variant (CV). This inherent versatility is also what makes the manufacturing difficult, especially when considering they are built on the same production line from components that are either machined or assembled in thirteen countries around the world (lockheedmartin.com,

The U.S. Government has a requirement for over 2400 planes for its armed forces, so there is high income potential for this business unit (Schmidt, 2014). Potential foreign sales could almost double the match the number of US planes. Lockheed Martin works with 1,400 suppliers, which range in size from Fortune 500 companies to "Mom and Pop" machining shops. Each F-35 sells for $100 million so the company is poised to rake in huge profits in future years.
Information Technology The Information Systems & Global Solutions unit as the name implies, provides information technology solutions, but it also offers management services and advanced technology applications. "It provides network-enabled situation awareness, delivers communications and command and control capability through complex mission solutions for defense applications and integrates complex global systems to help its customers gather, analyze and securely distribute critical intelligence data" (Erb, Avenue, Chen & Shin, 2015).
Missiles & Fire