At the 2010 Lockheed Martin Media Day, the company’s chairman and chief executive officer Bob Stevens addressed a group of journalists and said that the company was committed to supporting its customers by providing affordable solutions to meet their needs in a ‘new reality’ characterised by an escalating set of demands and increasing constraints on resources.
Stevens interacted with the media during a breakfast event designed to replace the company’s Farnborough Air Show media dinner and to give reporters an update on the Corporation’s programs and priorities and an opportunity to interface with the Corporation’s senior leadership team and programme experts.

He said the company’s priority was to align with its customers to meet increasing demands, operate within constrained resources and fulfill the obligation to support national security.

A critical part of meeting the new demands, he said, was avoiding the ‘boom-and-bust cycle’ in US defence spending. Stevens applauded secretary of defence Robert Gates’ call for regular growth in the defence budget to improve cost-efficiency. “Secretary Gates has been relentless and eloquent in demanding a new kind of focus — from the Department of Defence, the Congress, and the defence industry as well, to be extremely rigorous in determining what our requirements really are … to align our priorities with real world needs… and to ensure we do everything possible to make every dollar count.”
“We are disciplined in setting priorities to address several of the Corporation’s critical programmes and capabilities,” he said, “including the F-35 Lightning II, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite programme and company initiatives to include cyber security and renewable energy.”
Stevens told the group of journalists that the F-35 was a key defence programme for the US and partner nations. He also emphasised the company’s commitment to perform well by reducing development risks, minimising cost, improving momentum in the flight test program and accelerating production capability.

“There’s lots of cause for optimism overall on the F-35 program and we continue to make progress against the set of objectives,” he said. “I think this program is going to be one of the greatest things our company has ever participated in…and I’m confident that it will be one of the best investments the United States, our partners, and our allies, have ever made relative to our cooperative security.”