Jane Edwards
Lockheed Martin could hire more employees and collaborate with small businesses in Orlando, Fla., to support hypersonic weapon development work under two U.S. Air Force contracts worth up to $1.4B combined, the Orlando Business Journal reported Friday.
Lockheed’s missiles and fire control business secured on Aug. 13 a potential $480M contract to build an air-launched hypersonic rapid response weapon platform.
Four months prior to that, the company won a separate $928M contract to design and build a hypersonic conventional strike weapon technology.
The report said Lockheed could secure more work as the service branch seeks to have a functional prototype by 2021 amid efforts of Russia and China to ramp up development work on hypersonic missiles.
