Jim Taiclet
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Lockheed Martin
Thanks, Maria. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our first quarter 2024 earnings call. I'd like to begin today's discussion with a brief overview of our quarterly financial results, the state of the U.S. Department of Defense budget, status updates on some key programs, and recent advancements made to support our vision of 21st century security that integrates the latest digital technologies. Then, Jay and Maria will provide more detailed information about quarterly highlights and financials.
The increasingly unstable geopolitical environment in the world today makes it essential for industry and government to strengthen our nation's capabilities to deter and defend against further aggressive behavior against the U.S. and our allies. We here, at Lockheed Martin, are continuing to invest heavily to improve our design and production capabilities, while actively partnering with leading companies inside and outside the A&D industry to incorporate a wide range of technologies.
As a result, we delivered robust revenue growth across the company and we maintained a robust backlog of $159 billion, reflecting alignment between our advanced technology solutions and our customers' key missions and priorities. These first quarter results reinforce our confidence in our ability to achieve the full year financial expectations we shared in the most recent earnings call.
Moreover, the approved FY '24 defense budget reflected many positives for Lockheed Martin, consistent with national defense strategy priorities, too. Highlights include robust funding for munitions multi-year procurement, continued investment in hypersonics and classified activities, and ongoing support for programs such as Black Hawk, CH-53K heavy lift helicopter, the Fleet Ballistic Missile, C-130 and F-35. There were also additions to the original budget submission, including F-35 aircraft, C-130s and combat rescue helicopters.
The initial budget request for FY '25, while still very early in the process, continues support of many of these same major programs, including the F-35, CH-53K, UH-60M and others. In addition to emphasis on advanced munitions programs such as JASSM/LRASM, PrSM, Javelin, GMLRS and PAC-3, as well as hypersonic conventional prompt strike and the long-range hypersonic weapon. In addition to that, the Next Generation Interceptor is getting support, which I'll address more in a moment.
In this week, funding of $95 billion for Ukraine, Israel and Indo-Pacific security supplementals passed the House and is currently under consideration in the Senate. We expect FY '25 presidential budget request and additive supplemental funding will provide a strong underpinning for future growth over the next several years for our company, giving us further confidence in our long-range plan.
While demand for these key programs remains elevated, it is also essential that our program performance in terms of quality, safety, cost and schedule gets and stays at the highest level. On our most significant programs, I, Jay, and my senior executive team are personally and directly involved.
On the F-35, we remain focused on program execution in terms of concurrent development, production and sustainment, and we are bringing all relevant resources across our company and collaborating closely with our customers and suppliers to fully implement the TR-3 capabilities that everybody is looking forward to getting. These capabilities, based on the new core processor, data storage unit, and pilot display, will ensure that the F-35 is not only the most capable and effective fighter aircraft in the world, but it will also further advance its abilities to act as the air domain quarterback of joint all-domain operations for the U.S. and its allies.
We are encouraged by the solid progress made over the last few months towards resuming deliveries, including improvement in aircraft mission system capabilities and system stability as we advance from prior software versions toward the combat training capable configuration. Flight testing of this configuration is now underway, and we are on a path we expect to be on with regard to maturing the system with approximately 95% of TR3 capabilities in this flight test program. The test results to date support our expected timeline of delivering the first TR3 combat training capable aircraft in the third quarter and then transition to a fully combat capable aircraft in 2025.
As planned, there will be continual software updates to support further capability insertions over the Block 4 program and beyond. While there were no final deliveries of F-35 jets in the first quarter, we are maintaining our production rate and continue to expect an aircraft delivery range for 2024 between 75 and 110, which requires timely receipt of the necessary hardware from TR3 suppliers along the way. The F-35's advanced combat and interoperability capabilities continue to create strong demand for the aircraft internationally, too.
In the quarter, the Czech Republic became the 18th nation to join the F-35 global team with a signed letter of offer and acceptance, making it official its intent to procure 24 F-35s.In addition, the U.S. State Department approved a potential foreign military sale to Greece for up to 40 F-35s and Singapore announced its intent to purchase eight F-35As to complement the 12 F-35Bs to which it has already previously committed.
Also, in the lower air domain, while we are disappointed in the cancellation of the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft program, or FARA, Sikorsky remains committed to delivering innovative and reliable aviation capabilities to our domestic and global customers. With a strong foundation of more than $20 billion in backlog, bolstered by expected and funded growth in the heavy lift CH-53K helicopter program, Sikorsky's multi-year outlook is stable. We are also encouraged by the army's renewed commitment to Black Hawk production and modernization, as well as our ability to address mission gaps with capability upgrades that leverage Lockheed Martin's broad portfolio of solutions in the lower air domain, things such as autonomy, AI, et cetera.
Turning now to Missile Defense missions, which, given recent world events, are becoming more critical than ever. We continue to lead the industry. Last week, the Missile Defense Agency, or MDA, selected Lockheed Martin to deliver the new homeland missile defense capability for the United States, which is called the Next Generation Interceptor, or NGI. As the MDA's NGI prime contractor, Lockheed Martin will provide the most modern, reliable, and technically-advanced interceptor in the history of this system.
This program was a 1LMX, that's our digital transformation, born digital program, meaning we embrace model-based engineering, digital tools, processes and technologies from the very, very start of this program. Now as it continues on its path to the critical design review, integration with broader weapons system and flight tests, I'm proud of the Lockheed Martin team that enabled all of this. We were MDA's early down select before it was even on their schedule because we're so far in front to get this essential homeland defense capability off to a fast start.
Earlier this quarter, the Long Range Discrimination Radar, or LRDR, completed final acceptance and was officially handed over to the Missile Defense Agency in preparation for an operational capability baseline decision, and what that means is final transition to active service for that radar to help defend the country.
The LRDR is a cutting-edge national asset, providing the benefits of both low- and high-frequency radars to search, track and discriminate incoming missiles with an open system approach, enabling the customer to add incremental capabilities such as hypersonic defense. This is located up in Alaska in the prime location, where we can sense early what any attack might look like and respond to it. What that really does, though, is create an elevated deterrence to any kind of attack like that. So it's really great to have LRDR about ready to go online.
Now, both NGI and LRDR will be critical elements within the overall homeland defense mission, and they're going to be integrated into the broader defense architecture with a battle management system that we call Command, Control, Battle Management and Communications, or as the military calls it, C2BMC. So that's the system that's going to be used to integrate the radars, the missiles, and allow us to defend the country.
In April, Lockheed Martin was selected for a potential 10-year, $4 billion follow-on C2BMC next-generation contract with the MDA, demonstrating again our leadership position in battle management systems for homeland defense. Under this contract, we'll continue to modernize and expand the system's capabilities to enhance global integration, improve space domain awareness, and optimize sensor connectivity and data fusion to levels on than never done before. All of which will create the most complete picture of these incoming threats as I just spoke about a minute ago.
Separately, we also continue to advance our 21st century security solution through collaboration with strategic commercial partners across the tech, telecom, microprocessor and other industries to support the national defense. Citing just one example, we announced Lockheed Martin will work with Intel to support the Simulated Transition for Advanced Microelectronics Packaging or STAMP program for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. This Chips Act related collaboration will provide a revolutionary leap in defense systems capabilities using high performance U.S.-built semiconductors. Over the next 18 months, we'll integrate our latest sensor open system architecture technology with Intel semiconductors with the intent to ultimately implement, test, and complete production through the U.S. Navy's Lockheed Martin MH-60 Romeo helicopter program.
I'll now turn it over to Jay for award highlights and some additional commentary on our financial results. Jay?
