Sammanslagningen av militärens-och underrättelsetjänsternas program, informationsteknik och inre säkerhet utgifterna påbörjade på allvar efter 11 september attacken. Lockheed var perfekt positionerade för att dra fördel av övergången. USA:s regering beslutade för ett decennium sedan att låta Corporate America hantera den federala informationstekniken, ett stormsteg för Lockheed vid tillfälle. Lockheeds IT-försäljning har fyrdubblats sedan 1995, och under dessa år har Lockheed varit leverantör nummer ett till den federala regeringen, som nu lägger ut 83 procent av sitt IT arbete.
The melding of military and intelligence programs, information-technology and domestic security spending began in earnest after the Sept. 11 attacks. Lockheed was perfectly positioned to take advantage of the shift. When the United States government decided a decade ago to let corporate America handle federal information technology, Lockheed leapt at the opportunity. Its information-technology sales have quadrupled since 1995, and, for all those years, Lockheed has been the No. 1 supplier to the federal government, which now outsources 83 percent of its I.T. work.
Lockheed has taken over the job of making data flow throughout the government, from the F.B.I.’s long-dysfunctional computer networks to the Department of Health and Human Services system for tracking child support. The company just won a $525 million contract to fix the Social Security Administration’s information systems. It has an $87 million contract to make computers communicate and secrets stream throughout the Department of Homeland Security. On top of all that, the company is helping to rebuild the United States Coast Guard – a $17 billion program – and to supply, under the Patriot Act, biometric identity cards for six million Americans who work in transportation.
Lockheed is also the strongest corporate force driving the Pentagon’s plans for ”net-centric warfare”: the big idea of fusing military, intelligence and weapons programs through a new military Internet, called the Global Information Grid, to give American soldiers throughout the world an instant picture of the battlefield around them. ”We want to know what’s going on anytime, anyplace on the planet,” said Lorraine M. Martin, vice president and deputy of the company’s Joint Command, Control and Communications System division.
Lockheed’s global reach is also growing. Its ”critical mass” of salesmanship lets it ”produce global products for a global marketplace,” said Robert H. Trice Jr., the senior vice president for corporate business development. With its dominant position in fighter jets, missiles, rockets and other weapons, Lockheed’s technology will drive the security spending for many American allies in coming decades. Lockheed now sells aircraft and weapons to more than 40 countries. The American taxpayer is financing many of those sales. For example, Israel spends much of the $1.8 billion in annual military aid from the United States to buy F-16 warplanes from Lockheed.
Nathalie's view 