Lockheed Martin, MANTECH team to bring new tools to aircraft sustainment

Lockheed Martin has teamed with MANTECH to integrate AI sustainment solutions into the US military aircraft fleet, including the F-35 fighter jet. (Lockheed Martin)

Lockheed Martin announced in December that it was partnering with MANTECH to “integrate advanced AI [artificial intelligence]-driven sustainment solutions into the US combat aircraft fleet”.

“Through this effort, we will deliver real-time aircraft performance monitoring, predictive maintenance, optimised logistics support, and improved mission availability across legacy and next-generation platforms, while adhering to the highest standards of security,” the Lockheed Martin statement said.

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“We think about the flight line being the centre of gravity, and if you can solve operational success at the flight line and then backcast from there to figure out what solution sets you need to bring those capabilities to bear, there's certain things that Lockheed Martin knows how to do in the artificial intelligence space, in the automation space, in the decision-making analytic space, [and] the connectivity space,” Nick Smythe, vice-president of business development for sustainment for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, told Janes on 3 February, noting that “we didn't have solutions for everything we needed solutions for”.

“What we saw in MANTECH were things that complement the value proposition, and ultimately, we decided the right thing to do was to do it together,” he said.

“MANTECH brings in a lot of AI, advanced analytics, cyber-secure data integration [and] mission-critical software into this challenge,” John Sattely, executive director for contested logistics for MANTECH, told Janes on 3 February.