Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin Corporation builds fighters, missiles, helicopters, and satellites. The F-35 program makes it the prime on the Western world's main fighter, with suppliers and partner countries locked into a sustainment tail that lasts decades.

Defense competition is not a shopper market. The Department of Defense is often the only buyer, and it decides whether two teams bid. When only one firm can build a class of weapon, the antitrust problem is upstream: a merger or a teaming deal that eliminates the other bidder before the RFP.

The company has had mergers challenged or abandoned when they would combine the only missile or aerostructure rivals. Those reviews are the FTC and DOJ defense docket. Vertical deals that put a subsystem supplier inside the prime raise foreclosure for the remaining primes.

Sustainment and spare parts on fielded aircraft are an aftermarket. A military that cannot repair an F-35 without the prime is in the same structural position as a farmer with a locked tractor, with national-security process layered on top.

Single-source programs remove price competition for decades.

Teaming agreements can allocate a bid between the only two capable firms.

Vertical acquisitions of subsystem suppliers can starve rival primes.

Sustainment exclusivity is the aftermarket.

Taxpayers pay the prime's price when there is no second bidder.

A specialist supplier either joins Lockheed's team or sits out the program. There is often no third path.