BETHESDA, Md., Dec. 11, 2020 –The following is a statement from Lockheed Martin President and CEO James Taiclet:

As 2020 draws to a close, I’m incredibly proud of our team’s commitment to deliver essential national security work for the United States and allies during this unprecedented pandemic. In this year of global challenges, Lockheed Martin and our supply chain partners embodied tremendous resilience in our shared mission to support our men and women in uniform with the best equipment in the world, while doing so safely. That determination has allowed us to provide unrivaled air power to our customers; advance technology to counter threats, modernize security across land, sea, air, space, and cyber; and explore our solar system while keeping people safe. 

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, our employees have lived the company’s core values of doing what’s right, respecting others, and performing with excellence. By doing so, they helped us make a lasting impact on our supply chain, workforce, and the communities where we live and operate, bolstering them for the year ahead. 

Making an Impact on Our Workforce

• Our first priority remains the health and safety of our workforce to ensure our ability to support the national security needs of our nation and allies.
• As part of the essential Defense Industrial Base, we worked diligently to ensure the employees working in our factories and labs could do so safely, while implementing a flexible teleworking policy for those who could continue their critical work from home.
• Throughout the pandemic, we have recruited and hired key roles around the country, often virtually, to advance technologies that will shape the future and keep us an employer of choice.
• We have fulfilled our pledge to cover 100% of medical expenses related to COVID-19 for those employees and their families participating in company health plans.  

Making an Impact on Our Supply Chain

• Throughout the pandemic, we helped ensure a healthy supply base, accelerating payments to nearly 10,000 suppliers, including more than 5,900 small businesses across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 46 nations.
• This year the Department of Defense announced it would increase progress payment rates to large businesses from 80 percent to 90 percent, accelerating payments for the completion of work in recognition of the challenges posed by COVID-19. Lockheed Martin has flowed all of the accelerated payments it has received from the Department of Defense to its supply chain with a focus on small businesses and those at-risk.
• As 2020 draws to a close, it is our intent to end the year having accelerated in excess of $1 billion in invoices due to our supply chain in 2021.
• We consistently monitor COVID-19 impacts and continue to accelerate cash to at-risk suppliers and small businesses, working with our U.S. government partners and suppliers, to meet commitments vital to national security. 

Making an Impact for COVID-19 Relief

• In November, the public-private partnership Strategic Vaccines, LLC, announced Lockheed Martin is lending expertise to manufacturing FLOVID-20: a novel room temperature, stable, inhaled therapeutic for healthy patients diagnosed with COVID-19. Our work in computational fluid dynamics modeling will help maximize key manufacturing equipment performance of the vaccine.
• Recently, Canada-based artificial intelligence company DarwinAI announced Lockheed Martin has made an investment to help operationalize its COVID-Net initiative, which diagnoses COVID-19 using chest X-ray scans.
• Lockheed Martin donated corporate air support to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), completing 11 missions to support the federal government’s COVID-19 response and relief efforts.
  • The support was recognized by Be The Match, operated by NMDP, with its annual “Be There Award” for Lockheed Martin’s help moving time-critical, life-saving bone marrow from Europe and Canada to needy patients who required transplants during COVID.

Making an Impact in Our Communities

• Since March, Lockheed Martin has donated more than $21.9 million to support front line workers and first responders, public school students’ access to technology, access to food, community foundations’ ability to address local needs, and military service members.
• Across the country, we have produced more than 93,000 protective gowns and 54,000 face shields. We have donated PPE at more than 250 locations where frontline medical workers are caring for COVID-19 patients, and those at risk, including medically vulnerable seniors.
• By the end of the year, the corporation is on track to provide more than 300,000 meals in local communities surrounding nine Lockheed Martin locations.

Since becoming president and CEO of Lockheed Martin this year, I’ve often shared with our employees that how one performs under pressure reveals who they are. In my seven months on the job, I’ve seen our customers, supply chain and workforce rise to the challenge every day. As we look ahead to 2021, there’s no doubt that our company and the Aerospace and Defense industry as a whole will continue proactively driving the 21st century technological advances that help keep our country and our allies safe. 
 

About Lockheed Martin

Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 110,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services.

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Media Contact:

Jarrod Agen, 301-897-6412, jarrod.p.agen@lmco.com