Bloomberg Tech · Oct 2, 2026 · 44m · 34m saved
With Jim Taiclet, Chairman, President and CEO of Lockheed Martin · OJ Sanchez, President of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics · John Gruen, CEO of Fortem Technologies · Dr. Sarah Heiser, SVP of Technology and Strategic Innovation at Lockheed Martin · Lucas Singer, CEO of Divergent
Photo: U.S. House Armed Services Committee, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Lockheed Martin already has 1,350 F-35 fighter jets flying for the U.S. and its allies, with the fleet growing by about 160 a year. Its answer to what comes next is an aircraft designed from the start to fly with no pilot at all.
Most defense primes still wait for the Pentagon to write a 500-page requirements document before they build anything. Lockheed's chief executive says that process is gone, and the company is now pitching capability before the government even asks for it.
"The straitjacket's off the companies and the industry, and we welcome the new entrants." — Jim Taiclet
Bloomberg Tech broadcast live from Skunk Works, Lockheed's secretive advanced-aircraft facility where the F-35, the SR-71 and the Cold War-era D-21 drone were all designed, for a special built around one theme: a defense industry under pressure to move from the world's biggest defense contractor to the biggest defense technology company.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it. 44 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.
Here are the 8 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
Lockheed now pitches capability to the Pentagon before being asked, instead of waiting on a 500-page requirements document
1,350 F-35s are already flying, growing by about 160 a year, and Lockheed's next aircraft, Vectis, needs no pilot
A single F-35 has already controlled as many as eight Vectis aircraft in testing
Lockheed-backed startup Fortem just closed a $50 million Series B and is doubling its manufacturing and bookings this year
Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey, two of the Pentagon's biggest contractors, are now co-leading a 120-day study on what weapons the military should buy next
Lockheed runs 55 different large language models internally, and is now working directly with OpenAI to solve math and physics problems on the F-35's next sensor package
Manufacturing startup Divergent has raised over a billion dollars and can go from engineering design to a flight-ready part in under three months
Boeing beat Northrop for the Navy's next fighter jet, a contract Bloomberg Intelligence values at more than $20 billion
About $70 billion of missile orders flowed through Raytheon and Lockheed in the last month and a half alone
1. Lockheed's New Pitch
Jim Taiclet described how the Pentagon used to buy weapons: a government agency would write a detailed requirements document, several contractors would bid against it, and the lowest-cost technically qualified bidder would win — a process that then took years to deliver anything.
"It'd be down selected to one, usually the lowest-cost provider who was technically qualified would get the job." — Jim Taiclet
He said that model has changed. The Pentagon's current leadership now lets Lockheed build and field prototypes directly, testing them on real ships with sailors or at Army ranges like Yuma Proving Ground, rather than waiting on a fixed specification.
"We actually shot some of our JAGA missiles out of our Grizzly launcher and showed the Army and had their people operate it." — Jim Taiclet
Taiclet said Lockheed now welcomes outside startups into that process rather than treating them as competitors, willing to act as either prime contractor or subcontractor depending on who has the better solution.
"We welcome the startups because we want that creativity so we can learn from it." — Jim Taiclet
