Has Lockheed Martin unveiled a sixth generation fighter factory?

Lockheed Martin, which has just unveiled a new factory at its Skunk Works site, may use it to manufacture the US Air Force’s new sixth generation fighter.

The 215,000ft² digitally-enhanced factory located at USAF’s Plant 42 in Palmsdale, California, will incorporate smart manufacturing components like robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality to embrace the Internet of Things.

What will be built here is classified, but Skunk Works vice president and general manger, Jeff Babione, says he expects the factory to build fighters, reconnaissance aircraft as well as hypersonic missiles.

Babione declined to say whether the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) programme, USAF’s plans for a sixth generation fighter jet, will be built here, but explained that more than one project can be in series production at a time.

Skunk Works is responsible for many aerospace firsts, including the United States' first jet fighter, the P-80, the world's first stealth fighter, the F-117 and the world's first fifth generation fighter, the F-22. With a proven way of working based on 14 simple rules, the Skunk Works is known for rapidly solving urgent national needs. 

Small batches of products can be made more efficiently in the plant. “Not only did we not design it for anything in particular, we can design and build multiple assets within the same footprint, something that we really can’t do very well in our current arrangement,” so, “we can now bring [the values of] capacity/quantity to multiple programmes” that may not be built in large numbers. “We absolutely see a future where this facility is building multiple types of platforms.”

In a USAF biennial report for acquisition released in April, the service explained NGAD: “The program uses a non-traditional acquisition approach to avoid traditional monolithic program schedules and exorbitant life-cycle sustainment costs. This strategy, called the Digital Century Series approach, creates a realistic business case for industry to adopt commercial best practises for key design activities – before a part is even manufactured.”

USAF says it developed the secret fighter jet with digital engineering technology designed to dramatically shorten the time to develop a new aircraft. This at least follows the same digital principles of flexible and rapid development as the new Skunk Works factory.

Spirit AeroSystems also revealed this week that it has collaborated with Skunk Works on the new digitally connected factory.

As a result of the collaboration, advanced production processes were designed, planned, simulated, executed, and validated, leading to a 70% reduction in required assembly hours and a 95% increase in initial quality.

Polaris is one element of a larger multi-year investment called Project StarDrive from Lockheed Martin. StarDrive is reengineering the culture, processes and tools needed to operate in a fully integrated digital work environment.

It is almost certain one of the three big aerospace defence contractors, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin has built a prototype for NGAD. And Lockheed Martin is the only one currently manufacturing a stealth fighter and produced the F-22, which NGAD will ultimately replace. The company also has a media contact specifically for Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD).

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