The U.S. Navy on Monday awarded Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company the S-3B Viking Prime Vendor Support (PVS) contract valued at $43 million.

The five-year contract includes in-service engineering, integrated logistics support, depot level scheduled maintenance, and material management for the Navy's East Coast squadron aircraft.

"This is a tremendous success for the Navy/Lockheed Martin Team," said Rob Weiss, LM Aero's P-3/S-3 program director. "There's been a strong partnership between the Navy and Lockheed Martin since the beginning of the S-3 Program in the early seventies. The extension of this partnership into the PVS arena will serve as an example of how to maintain high readiness for legacy aircraft while ensuring efficient use of taxpayer dollars."

The PVS contract is the first of its kind for a carrier-based aircraft. "Nothing like this has been done before for the U.S. Navy, and we're looking forward to demonstrating how this type of work can increase aircraft availability at lower cost," said Mark Jarvis, S-3 program manager for LM Aero.

LM Aero won the competition for the PVS contract over a wide field of bidders. LM Aero was selected due to their strong S-3 technical knowledge and cost competitiveness.

"We're confident that we'll deliver the best value for the Navy customer and as the prime weapons system integrator of the S-3B, we have the technical expertise required to meet the contract requirements," said Jarvis.

Lockheed Martin Aero is currently executing a $40 million contract to perform a Full Scale Fatigue Test of the S-3 airframe to verify that critical structural modifications will allow the S-3 fleet to reach desired service life goals. "The PVS contract fits well with the fatigue testing we're already doing on the S-3. We've made great progress with fatigue testing and the data we're gathering will be extremely useful in future work with the S-3," said S-3 Air Vehicle Manager, Dave Campbell.

The work on the PVS contract will be performed by a Lockheed Martin team at naval facilities, NAS-Jacksonville.

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company is a leader in the design, development, systems integration, production and support of advanced military aircraft and related technologies. Its customers include the military services of the United States and allied countries throughout the world. Products include the F-16, F-22, C-130, C-5, P-3, S-3, F-117, U-2, X-33 and Joint Strike Fighter, among other renowned aircraft. LM Aeronautics is a unit of Lockheed Martin Corporation headquartered in Bethesda, Md., and is a global enterprise principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture and integration of advanced-technology systems, products and services. The corporation's core businesses are systems integration, space, aeronautics and technology services.

SOURCE: Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company