Lockheed added to $499M Air Force vehicle research contract

Lockheed Martin has been added to a potential eight-year, $499 million contract with the Air Force to research new technologies for use in development of future air vehicles.

Lockheed becomes the third company to gain a position on the Aerospace Systems Air Platform Technology Research program that started with initial awards earlier this month to Northrop Grumman and Aurora Flight Sciences.

The Defense Department said the $499 million shared ceiling is for six companies and the Air Force received six offers for the contract. A January broad agency announcement says the contract covers a five-year ordering period for performance over seven years.

ASAPTR awardees will help the Air Force research how it can develop, demonstrate, integrate and transition new air vehicle technologies and systems to deliver weapons, payloads and cargo.

Contractor research-and-development work covers areas such as configurations, aeromechanics, propulsion, structures, computational fluid dynamics and computational structural mechanics.