Northrop eyes munitions supply work, Lockheed eyes funding: CEOs

WASHINGTON — Northrop Grumman wants to expand its market share as a supplier to munitions providers, with ongoing discussions about increasing its work on eight different weapons programs, its chief executive said today.

“We are taking this opportunity to work with partners we have not worked with before, show them the products we have, and define what our path is to gaining share on those weapons,” Northrop CEO Kathy Warden told investors at the Morgan Stanley conference today. “There are 10 agreements — about eight weapons — that we are in active discussions with various primes on.”

Warden added that those discussions span from Northrop’s role as a provider of solid rocket motors to other components such as seekers, cases, nozzles and fuses.

The Pentagon has made boosting munitions production a key acquisition priority, while also pushing the defense industry to make larger investments in the facilities and equipment needed to scale up weapons manufacturing.

To induce those investments, the department has entered into roughly a dozen framework agreements with companies. Northrop announced its first such agreement with the Pentagon in August, which will see the company emerge as a second source of solid rocket motors for the Patriot’s PAC-3 missile as well as scaling up component production for PAC-3 and THAAD.

Northrop’s version of the PAC-3 solid rocket motor has been fully qualified and the company is “far along” in contract negotiations with Lockheed Martin, Warden said.

“Now we are in the process of ramping production and meeting increasingly higher targets for delivery,” she said. “We are feeling very good about how that’s progressing and simultaneously working our way through contract negotiations.”

Beyond munitions, Warden pointed to the B-21 bomber program as one that could see expansion, noting that the Air Force is currently analyzing whether to expand the program of record for 100 B-21s.

That analysis is set to conclude this year, and involves evaluating whether the B-21 could be used for other missions aside from its original use as a strategic bomber, she said.

The Air Force “look at this [B-21] as a multifunctional aircraft,” she said. Originally, “it was an aircraft that was designed to meet part of the nuclear triad mission, but it can do so much more.”

Much of the Pentagon’s munitions funding — along with other key priorities like Golden Dome, the department’s Drone Dominance program, and much of the planned F-35 procurement for fiscal 2027 — are tied up in its $350 billion reconciliation request, which has yet to be passed by Congress.

That’s not a major hindrance for Northrop, Warden said, which is seeing funding for most of its programs come through the base budget, with reconciliation funds seen by the company as “upside.”

“We do believe that there is room for some of the reconciliation and supplemental priorities to be funded in addition to the base budget,” she said, adding that, “We think that’s unlikely to happen in the near term.”

Warden also said she thinks its likely that Congress will fail to come to a budget agreement before the continuing resolution expires on Dec. 11, echoing comments made by Pentagon Comptroller Jules Hurst in a recent interview with Breaking Defense.

“[It’s] likely that the CR will be further extended,” she said. “It does cost the government more when we have these extended periods of continuing resolution. But at the end of the day, as we look at our programs, we have the funding we need to continue work and believe that’s the case even into early next year.”

Lockheed Investing, Despite Budget Uncertainty

Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet, appearing earlier in the day, also touched on the question of the budget. And like Warden, he downplayed concerns, noting the timing of a budget agreement “[does] not affect our overall business that much” due to the lengthy backlog of orders at the world’s largest defense firm.

However, he added that congressional action is needed to fund the munitions production agreements, which for Lockheed includes deals for PAC-3, THAAD interceptors, the Precision Strike Missile and — as of today — the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile (JATM).

“We do need Congress to come in for the full funding of the whole seven years, if you will,” he said. “They’ve already been doing two or three years so far on some of the programs we have under these long-term agreements. I do think Congress will see the value of this and the protections that we put in for the government and the upside they put in for industry, and I think they will get there.”

Lockheed announced this morning that GM Defense, the military subsidiary of American car manufacturer General Motors, delivered its first round of mission critical components for the PAC-3 missile. The deliveries occurred on Aug. 28, “less than one month after a formal contract between the two companies was signed” on Aug. 6, Lockheed said in a statement. The companies announced a partnership agreement in June at the Reindustrialize conference.

Taiclet also revealed that Lockheed is bankrolling initial production of GRIZZLY, the new low-cost containerized launch system it unveiled earlier this year.

“I said, ‘Build 1,000 of each of them right now, and we’ll figure out how to either sell them to the U.S. government or somebody else, or lease them out,’” Taiclet said. “This is the right technology solution. This is scalable, and we’re going to have a couple of hundred of these GRIZZLY’s ready to deploy by the end of the year.”

The company is also testing the GRIZZLY launcher aboard Saildrone autonomous ships, he said.