Lockheed Martin is the largest producer of weapons in human history, the product of a 1995 merger of the world's two largest defence corporations.
Their lines of business include government satellites, information technology base systems and launch services, tactical and strategic missile systems, naval electronics, surveillance systems and various kinds of aircraft, including cargo airplanes, bombers and fighter jets.
Lockheed Martin is also proud to be pioneering war's final frontier: space.
With the United States officially at war, the military machine will rely heavily on this corporation — and Lockheed Martin can be counted on.
The company proudly states that it "is deeply involved in solving the problems and meeting the demands and expectations of its customers", its most important customer being the US government.
In sum, the new Lockheed Martin Corporation comprises all or portions of 17 heritage companies. It traces its roots back to the early days of flight. In 1909 aviation pioneer Glenn Martin organised a company around a modest airplane construction business and built it into a major airframe supplier to US military and commercial customers.
In 1913, Allan and Malcolm Loughhead (name later changed to Lockheed) flew the first Lockheed plane over San Francisco Bay. The modern Lockheed Corporation was formed in 1932 after the fledgling airplane company was reorganised.
As World War II expanded, so too did the two companies. Between them, the companies produced many of the country's best-known war planes and transport aircraft, including Martin's China Clipper and the B-26 Marauder, and the Lockheed P-38 Lightning and XP-900, the company's first fighters.
When peacetime arrived, the Lockheed and Martin companies scaled back accordingly. Lockheed kept up production of its fighter and transport planes, while Martin focused on the commercial airline industry, and ventured into production of missiles, rockets, and other modern weapons.
In 1961, Martin merged with American-Marietta, a leading supplier of building and road construction materials, to form Martin-Marietta. During the 1960s, the space program dominated much of both Lockheed's and Martin-Marietta's efforts.
They were also involved in supplying military equipment to the US military fighting the Vietnam War: Lockheed's C-130 Hercules transport plane, for example, was a prime mover of troops and supplies.
Many of the heritage companies of the modern Lockheed Martin also made contributions to the Space Shuttle program.
Lockheed-made aircraft and weapons systems and Martin Marietta-made missiles, weapons, and electronics made significant contributions to the 1991 war on Iraq. The two companies finally merged in 1995.
While it supplies weapons of death, that doesn't mean the company isn't committed to ethics and morals: its web site has an entire section on the topic.
Certainly, there must have been serious reflection in the corporation's board room about whether the maiming and killing of soldiers and civilians by its technology was worth the US$25 billion in sales for the year 2000.
Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the company has again come out on top: winning contracts with the military worth US$200 billion.
In October, the Pentagon announced that Lockheed Martin had beaten Boeing to its biggest contract — the deal to design and build 3,000 Joint Strike Fighter warplanes for the US Air Force, Navy and Marines and Britain's Royal Navy and Air Force. Foreign sales of the plane — the X-35 — are tipped to boost the contract's total value to $600 billion.
Surely nothing better embodies the "American Dream" than Lockheed Martin, starting off as small businesses which, through innovation and the suffering of millions, was able to build a global empire capable of monopolising the weapons of a future holocaust.
BY CHRIS KERR
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, November 21, 2001.
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