Lockheed Martin

James J. Kotmair, a retired Lockheed Martin Corp. systems analyst, died Saturday of pneumonia related to Lou Gehrig's disease at his Village of Cross Keys home. The former Roland Park resident was 62. Born in Baltimore and raised on Ostend Street, he was a 1963 Calvert Hall College High School graduate who earned a bachelor's degree in history at what is now Towson University. He served in the Army in an intelligence unit in Vietnam for three years. He later served in the Maryland National Guard and attained the rank of sergeant.

WASHINGTON -- Lockheed Martin Corp., the nation's top defense contractor, leads a team that won a contract yesterday worth up to $10.1 billion to repair and overhaul U.S. Air Force planes.Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin beat a team led by No. 7 contractor United Technologies Corp.'s Pratt & Whitney for the 15-year contract.The work is for engines in F-16 and F-15 fighter jets, C-130 and C-5 transports, and Navy P-3 Orion surveillance planes.Lockheed Martin's Greenville, S.C.-based Aircraft & Logistics Center will shift much of the work to the Oklahoma Air Logistics Center at Tinker Air Force Base.

WASHINGTON -- Lockheed Martin Corp.'s troubled THAAD Army missile program missed its target yesterday for the sixth straight test despite a year of preparation and enormous pressure to succeed.The Bethesda-based defense company stands to forfeit $15 million in expenses for the failure. The Pentagon so far has spent about $3.8 billion on the $14 billion program.The stakes could hardly have been higher for what is intended to be the premier defense against ballistic missiles for U.S. troops in the field.

WASHINGTON -- A Lockheed Martin Corp. Titan IVB rocket's failure to put a $800 million military communications satellite in the proper orbit April 30 stemmed from faults in testing, quality assurance and software development procedures, the Air Force said yesterday.The process didn't find and correct a software programming mistake made in early February by a software engineer for the No. 1 defense contractor's Denver-based astronautics sector, the Air Force said."The error went undetected by both the internal quality assurance processes and the independent verification and validation process," said the Air Force.

From his office in Linthicum, George E. "Chip" Pickett Jr. can watch airplanes coming and going at nearby Baltimore-Washington International Airport. But he's always looking farther than that.The former Army intelligence officer is one of the defense industry's leading thinkers and strategists, peering into the future to help steer Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Electronic Sensors & Systems Sector through a period of complex changes.His vision for the coming year for the defense industry:More change.

Delivering some much-needed good news to Lockheed Martin Corp., the government of Israel agreed yesterday to buy 50 F-16 fighter planes in a package worth about $2.5 billion.Israel chose the versatile jets over the more powerful and more expensive F-15, which is built by Boeing Co.The deal had been expected for several months, but the announcement was delayed by the change of government in Israel caused by the election of Prime Minister Ehud Barak."This was another hard-fought competition that reaffirms the F-16 as the multi-role fighter of choice for the world's most discriminating air forces," said Dain Hancock, president of the Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems plant in Fort Worth, Texas, where the planes are built.

Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin Corp. announced yesterday that it has reached a preliminary agreement to sell at least 50 F-16 fighter planes to Greece in a transaction valued at a total of $2 billion.Greece selected the F-16 Fighting Falcon over the F-15 Eagle, made by Boeing Co., after a long and intense evaluation, said Joseph Stout, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin."Greece has selected the plane and said it wants to buy it, but the transaction must first be approved by Congress," Stout said.

Maryland added a handful of companies to the annual ranking of the Fortune 500 for 1999, primarily the result of mergers and acquisitions.Hechinger Co., Integrated Health Services Inc. and U.S. Foodservice Inc. all made the magazine's list for the first time because of business pairings that bolstered their revenues.Host Marriott Corp., the Bethesda hotel company that is one of three Marriott offshoots to be ranked, shot its way onto the list because of acquisitions. Last year, it invested more than $1.5 billion to buy lodging properties.

LOS ANGELES -- A unit of aerospace giant Lockheed Martin Corp. is the focus of a Los Angeles federal grand jury probe of possible long-term kickbacks involving sales of defense radar systems to foreign governments, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Lockheed disclosed in a recent SEC filing that it received a federal subpoena July 15 seeking documents relating to the sales of radar systems by its New Hampshire-based Sanders unit in 1990.Neither the company nor the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles would elaborate on Lockheed's disclosure in the Aug. 4 SEC filing.

What does it take to be a VIP? At the governor's inaugural ball, all you need is $30,000.Gov. Parris N. Glendening's inaugural celebration is becoming a fund-raising feast, drawing hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from an array of businesses with state interests -- and drawing criticism from political opponents and a government watchdog group.Four years ago, Glendening's inaugural committee asked for contributions of up to $15,000 to help pay for two parties, and he was criticized for asking special interests to pony up large sums just before the annual General Assembly session.

Lockheed Martin, one of Baltimore County's larger employers, officially opened its sixth facility Monday in Woodlawn and announced plans to add 160 information technology jobs to a work force that exceeds 1,500. The company's Information Systems & Global Services division has refurbished and rewired a nearly 42,000-square-foot brick building on Woodlawn Drive near the Social Security Administration complex. In the past year, the company has hired about 200 employees in its efforts to provide a wide variety of services to SSA, which is continuing modernization efforts.

The radical reshuffling of America's military priorities proposed by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates this week makes an important turn away from the wasteful spending on the kinds of wars we used to fight to better prepare for the nontraditional conflicts we are likely to face. Maryland would gain because billions in Pentagon spending would be shifted toward intelligence, surveillance and research programs headquartered here, most importantly, at the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, which intercepts and decrypts secret communications around the world.

WASHINGTON - Streamlining and restructuring military spending for conflicts like Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates proposed on Monday adding special force troops, cyber-war capabilities, theater missile defense systems to protect troops and unmanned aerial vehicles while slashing some big-war, big-ticket programs such as the supersonic stealth F-22 fighter made by Lockheed Martin of Bethesda. The proposed cancellation of the F-22 production line, which had long been expected, potentially threatens about 625 jobs in Maryland at Lockheed Martin and some subcontractors, according to Lockheed.

River Hill's Garcia wins scholarship Leo Carelle Garcia, a senior at River Hill High School, is one of 20 students around the country to receive a Citigroup Academy of Finance Scholarship of $20,000, or $5,000 a year for four years, to be used for tuition, room, board and other educational expenses. In addition to receiving the award, Garcia will be paired with a Citigroup mentor and given a summer internship at one of Citigroup's subsidiary companies in the United States or abroad. As a student in the Academy of Finance, part of a national program of specialty classes, he has served as state president of DECA, a student organization focused on business and marketing.

Federal spending in Maryland - a key engine for this government-town state - rose faster in the 2006 fiscal year than it did nationwide, according to a new tally released yesterday. Total spending, which ranges from salaries to Social Security checks to spy drones, jumped nearly 10 percent to $75 billion after accounting for inflation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Spending in the United States as a whole rose a more modest 4 percent. Despite that trend, the Census Bureau said the amount funneled to contractors doing work in Maryland, an important part of the state's economy, fell for the first time since just before the 9/11 attacks.

WASHINGTON -- Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Joint Strike Fighter, already the most expensive weapons program ever, is projected to increase in price by as much as $38 billion, congressional auditors said yesterday. That would bring the cost to develop and build 2,458 U.S. aircraft to $337 billion, 45 percent above the estimate when the program started in October 2001. "Midway through development, the program is over cost and behind schedule," Michael J. Sullivan, who tracks the program for the Government Accountability Office, told two panels of the House Armed Services Committee that oversee military spending.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military's top weapons buyer has approved signing a three-year contract with Lockheed Martin Corp. and United Technologies Corp.'s Pratt & Whitney engine unit for 60 F-22A Raptor warplanes, engines and spare parts, a package worth as much as $10 billion. Approval of the three-year contract locks the military into purchases and minimizes chances that quantities would be cut in annual congressional budget deliberations. $65.2 billion program The Pentagon in 2005 capped the program at 183 aircraft.

Lockheed Martin Corp.'s CEO Robert J. Stevens has had a lucrative career at the nation's largest defense contractor, and his pay has been outlined to shareholders for years. But investors didn't know how lucrative his retirement could be. The Bethesda-based company has disclosed for the first time that in addition to $5.2 million in salary and bonus, plus stock awards and perks last year, Stevens also accrued more than $2 million in three pension plans, two 401(k) plans and a tax-advantaged plan mostly used by the corporate elite.

The "C" Building on Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Middle River campus churned out Mace and Matador guided missiles during the 1940s and 1950s, Pershing Missile Launchers during the 1960s and Patriot Missile Launchers during the 1970s. Yesterday, Lockheed officials unveiled its latest reincarnation: Non-Line Of Sight missile launchers for the Army and Navy. It's new business for the campus and allowed Bethesda-based Lockheed to expand its work force there by 20 percent to 650 - a far cry from the more than 53,000 who built 120 military planes a month at its peak in 1943 during World War II. Today, Lockheed leases a portion of the nearly 70-year-old "C" Building to a warehousing company.

Daniel Berliant, a former human resources executive for U.S. Foodservice Inc. in Columbia and consultant to the Teamsters Union Local 355, died of acute leukemia April 14 at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 59. Born in the Bronx, N.Y., Mr. Berliant later moved with his family to Allentown, Pa., where he graduated from local schools. He attended Pennsylvania State University in State College, graduating in 1968 from the Smeal College of Business with a bachelor's degree in business administration.