“21st Century Security” Becomes Lockheed Martin’s Driving Vision Of The Future

Two years into his tenure as CEO of Lockheed MartinLMT
, James D. Taiclet has done a decent job of keeping the world’s biggest arms maker on an even keel.

This year will see a modest top-line decline due to timing issues on major contracts, but the ValueLine investment survey figures that by 2025-27 corporate revenues will rise from $67 billion to $84 billion.

Meanwhile, Lockheed’s dividends per share continue their steady march upward, having more than doubled since Taiclet’s predecessor Marillyn Hewson took over the top job nearly a decade ago.

Lockheed remains the world’s largest producer of tactical aircraft, military space systems, and any number of other defense products, a status it is unlikely to relinquish for many years to come.

But as Taiclet has added the chairman’s position to his titles and become more comfortable in his role, a subtle change has begun to take hold at Lockheed Martin. Having worked with the company for many years, I am struck by the change of tone.

Traditionally, top executives at the company have tended to be defense-industry lifers who focused on financial performance and were reticent about articulating big ideas that might get them crosswise with their federal customers.

Taiclet is not a product of the traditional defense industry. Although he began his career as an Air Force pilot and went on to occupy several high-level positions at companies like Allied Signal and United TechnologiesUTX
, more recently he spent 18 years running a telecom company called American Tower.

And he didn’t just run it—he transformed it, increasing the company’s market cap 50-fold while turning it into a global player in the wireless communications business.

The Harvard Business School ranked Taiclet as one of the world’s top-performing CEOs seven times during his run at American Tower, so by the time Marillyn Hewson identified him as a suitable successor, he was regarded as something of a visionary in the tech sector.

Part of what Hewson saw was that traditional barriers between defense and commercial technology were melting away, and that the defense business in the future would be driven largely by dual-use technologies.

That shift was formalized the same month Taiclet took over as Lockheed’s CEO in June of 2020, when the Pentagon disclosed a reordering of its technology priorities for the future.

Henceforth, the military’s top technology priorities would be microelectronics and 5G communications, followed by a host of other mostly dual-use innovations such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and quantum science.

Under Taiclet, the company has continued to invest heavily in all of the Pentagon’s priority technologies except for biotech, and in some areas such as hypersonics and space it is the leading player.

However, his time in the commercial sector has convinced Taiclet that digital networking will be foundational to how enemies are deterred or defeated in the future, so that is where he is putting his greatest emphasis.

The rubric the company applies to Taiclet’s emerging vision is “21st Century Security,” by which it means the integration of systems operating across all warfighting domains via resilient, high-capacity networks.

This represents a major departure from the stove-piped operating practices of the past in which different warfighting communities seldom communicated effectively, but it is fully consistent with what the military calls “joint all-domain operations.”

But Taiclet’s vision goes well beyond the Pentagon’s latest thinking about networked warfare, because he believes the only way to get the joint force to where it needs to be expeditiously is via partnerships with commercial tech companies.

That is, after all, where most of the technologies defining the information age originated, and Taiclet is not about reinventing the wheel: he wants to take what the commercial world has to offer, and adapt it to the needs of the military.

So Lockheed has recently entered into a series of partnerships with companies like IntelINTC
, Nvidia and Verizon to hasten the assimilation of technologies like 5G into its products.

If Taiclet’s vision is realized, one day in the not-too-distant future, military systems across all warfighting domains will be continuously linked to generate the best information and optimum effects in dealing with military challenges.

Once that occurs, the enhancement of U.S. military capabilities can proceed at a much faster pace than is presently feasible.

An early example of how the 21st Century Security concept might play out is reflected, surprisingly, in an initiative Lockheed Martin has launched to defeat the spreading threat of wildfires around the globe.

Megafires destroying a hundred thousand acres of forest have become much more common than they once were, and fire seasons are becoming more lengthy.

Lockheed has developed an approach to fighting such fires that attacks conflagrations using satellites, networks, artificial intelligence and other innovations in an integrated, real-time fashion.

The proposed system doesn’t just get superior firefighting capacity to fires quickly, it predicts where fires might occur and detects them when they do, using systems like a lightning mapper already resident on U.S. weather satellites.

Working with Nvidia, the company will use artificial intelligence to simulate and visualize major fires, creating a digital twin that tells firefighters how they might spread.

And it is developing a business model that provides firefighting as a service to financially strapped communities, greatly enhancing the timeliness and precision of efforts.

The concept is still in its infancy, but it illustrates how dual-use technologies and commercial partnerships can improve responses to emergent dangers.

While the Taiclet vision will remain focused largely on traditional military concerns, its approach to future security challenges is a distinctly non-traditional way of doing business.

Lockheed Martin is a contributor to my think tank and a longtime consulting client.