This is the time we cycle over our forecasts for the next 10 years, thus our 10-year forecast now covers the years 2025-2034. But first, let’s review last year. As you may recall, we expected 2024 to be a banner year, with units rising almost 8% and values 11%. Unfortunately, what with the aftermath of the Alaska Airlines MAX 9 incident, ongoing regulatory and supplier delays, and labor actions, things didn’t quite pan out as planned. While Boeing was hit by the perfect storm of all of these, every manufacturer was affected one way or another by some of these mitigating factors.

Lockheed Martin is the world’s largest defense contractor. With a strong presence across multiple key aerospace segments, the company is well positioned to compete for critical US and international opportunities. Its expertise in systems integration, space and aircraft also gives it considerable potential to bring together the systems capabilities to which major US prime contractors now aspire. In addition, Lockheed Martin has a long lived and a strong reputation for technological expertise.

In terms of worldwide military budgets, the unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) segment continues to see growth, although annual growth has moderated when compared to a decade ago. The unclassified sector will continue to increase over the next decade, by about 91.9%, almost doubling, from current annual spending on RDT&E and procurement of about $14.9 billion in FY25 to about $28.6 billion in FY34 (a CAGR of 7.5%). If operations and maintenance expenditures were to be added, these totals would be greater.

In November 2024, Russia fired a high-altitude 1,000+ km range “ICBM” (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) at Ukraine’s Yuzhmash engineering development and manufacturing facility in Dnipro – ironically, a legacy facility itself involved in the development and production of nuclear missiles for the USSR during Soviet times (Yuzhmash is now named PA Pivdenmash). This was the world’s first ever combat use of an armed “ICBM.” The new missile, referred to as the Oreshnik by Vladimir Putin, has been classified by the US DoD as an IRBM (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile) developed out of the Russian RS-26 Rubezh ICBM.