Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet’s firm profits massively from the F-35 strike aircraft and other weapons used by Israel in its Gaza genocide. And he has told investors that the US-Israel war on Iran is a “golden opportunity” for the firm to do even better.
Lockheed Martin: laughing all the way to the bank
First, Taiclet said that the war is making it easier to retain key staff without necessarily having to pay them better. He said that Lockheed does enough on pay to beat the industry average on staff retention. But he told investors with relish that the use of the company’s products to protect Israel and US assets also plays a significant role in keeping people in the company:
Like, this air defense mission we’re talking about is so important and the situation in the Middle East would be far, far different if the Patriot, the THAAD and the Aegis systems weren’t employed, and others from other of our competitors and partners. People get drawn to that mission, and they tend to stick around if that’s why they came here. The contracting side, we had a meeting with about 30 of our key people yesterday in Arlington, in our office there, and I said the same thing to them.
And Taiclet considers the US’s and Israel’s aggression in west Asia to be a goldmine for Lockheed Martin:
This is a golden opportunity right now based on who’s in government, their experience, their willingness to change, the demand that they have for what we do and our partners in our industry do.
He says this is, in part, because he thinks the greater need will remove the “burden” of regulation, honest negotiations and rigorous costing:
We can move the contracting system from this FAR, cost, Federal Acquisition Regulation-based, cost-based, Truth in Negotiations Act burden that we’ve all had and move it more towards a commercial contracting system, which is exactly the agreement we have in these frameworks with the Department of War right now. This is the time to do that. I would say the new entrants and the venture-backed companies are constructive on this. They’re helping us and the government get out of our traditions and into a more agile contracting scenario. We embrace that … We’ll have better ROI on our investments going forward…
A ‘subcontractor’ to Palantir
But he also admits that Lockheed Martin is “a subcontractor to Palantir and Anduril“, sinister firms seeking to push the US military in the direction of ‘autonomous’, AI-controlled weapons systems. Like those corporations, Lockheed is exploiting the situation in the push to AI-driven battle systems:
We’re introducing Artificial Intelligence into target recognition, into battle management, command and control, target weapons matching, as it’s called, things like that. Places where you’ve got a lot of data. If you can fuse it, bring intelligence to it quickly and provide commanders and pilots options, that’s basically the way we’re driving AI into our mission solutions, if you will. All of this is within what we call the Lockheed Martin Artificial Intelligence Center.
On 28 February, a new, “barely out of prototype testing” Lockheed Martin ‘Precision Strike Missile’ hit a girls’ volleyball game in Lamerd, Iran. It killed at least 21 people. “Precision” in this missile’s name means that it explodes above the ‘target’ and sprays a wide area with thousands of high-velocity tungsten pellets that tear through flesh and bone.
This airburst is what slaughtered Iranian girls playing volleyball. It is considered a selling point, boasted about by the likes of the Ukrainian military with “live test footage” provided by the manufacturer:
Such things are ‘golden’, in the eyes of the monsters of the western arms industry. After all, they help retain staff and fatten profits for companies like Lockheed Martin.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
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