Lockheed Martin recorded a $555M loss in Q4 2024 on a classified aeronautics program.

Lockheed described the impacted aeronautics program as a fixed-price incentive fee contract involving “highly complex design and systems integration.” The company conducted a review of the program due to undisclosed near-term milestones and trends experienced in the fourth quarter, and recorded losses based on “higher projected costs in engineering and integration activities that are necessary to achieve those forthcoming milestones,” it said.

Lockheed just yesterday reported another $950M loss from Q2 2025, also from a classified aeronautics program, a Skunkworks project to “push the boundaries of science and technology to deliver highly advanced solutions that provide our customers a step-function advantage over potential adversaries.”

“This is a highly classified program that can only be described as a game-changing capability for our joint U.S. and international customers,” Taiclet added, “and therefore it is critical that it be successfully fielded.”

The $150B defense reconcilliation bill included $1.1B for "strike aircraft"

$9 billion for air superiority. The latest version of the bill deleted $1 billion in spending for classified programs and inserted $600 million for an Air Force long range strike aircraft and $500 million for a Navy long range strike aircraft — two efforts that do not seem to be associated with a publicly-known program of record.

From the bill:

18) $600,000,000 for the development, procurement, andintegration of Air Force long-range strike aircraft; and (19) $500,000,000 for the development, procurement, and integration of Navy long-range strike aircraft.

All of the above are facts. Their connection is speculation. The "long-range strike aircraft" could be completely unrelated to Lockheed's losses. Personally, I think this is likely the case, as Lockheed does not have much of a history of building strike aircraft for the Navy.

But the two large aeronautics losses for Lockheed may very well be connected. Who knows. But if it is a single program, this is a significant program, as shown by the $1.5B loss recorded in the past 3 quarters.

Lockheed recorded these losses because they

"discovered new insights in the quarter that required us to adjust our expected future costs on that program and then recognized the charge for doing so."

Their accounting process recorded the loss immediately. A program with a $1.5B "oopsie we underestimated the costs" is a program with significant revenue potential.

For comparison, Northrop Grumman recently recorded a $477M loss on the B-21 Raider program in order to increase the production rate (perhaps doubling it from 7 to 14 aircraft per year). This is on a program that will likely earn Northrop over $100B in revenue.

Worth noting that Lockheed Martin is a very large defense prime that does many many things. No, it's not "definitely" SR-72.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/f35-blair-trump-1.7484477

Canada is dropping its procurement of F-35 jets from the US from 88 to 35, and replacing this with Swedish Saab Gripen E/F 39s. Is it time for Australia to do the same?

The F-35s are problematic because of the close ties to the US defence forces, especially the complex back-to-base reporting back for logistics. Who can trust the US as an ally any more?

And of course the programs own problems “According to (US) GAO, the F-35 fleet is not meeting performance goals for availability, reliability, and maintainability.” https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48304