Lockheed Martin and Microsoft have inked an expansion of their strategic relationship to work on Department of Defense (DOD) capabilities.
In a statement the companies said the agreement will span four critical areas of the DOD.
- Cloud innovations: Microsoft’s latest secure framework will make Lockheed Martin the first non-government entity to independently operate inside the Microsoft Azure Government Secret cloud.
- Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML), modeling and simulation capabilities: Lockheed Martin and Microsoft have entered a two-year collaborative research and development (R&D) program that will advance AI/ML and modeling and simulation capabilities for the DOD. Through this agreement, Lockheed Martin will partner with Microsoft to build on Microsoft’s gaming, exercising, modeling and simulation (GEMS) and emulation solutions to bring military planning and coordination through immersive environments.
- MIL programs: The R&D agreement expands the companies’ existing collaboration to deliver advanced networking and secure 5G capabilities. Key developments include a tactical 5G core, management and orchestration of applications and networks at scale and cloud-native security. The companies are also expected to advance space domain connectivity for austere, infrastructure-light environments.
- Digital transformation: Microsoft Azure will power Lockheed Martin’s digital transformation. Lockheed Martin will advance its business and digital transformation called 1LMX. 1LMX is enhancing the company’s speed, agility, insights and competitiveness as it delivers the next generation of DOD systems. As part of this transformation, Lockheed Martin will become a multi-cloud environment in the unclassified space using Microsoft Azure as the cloud provider.
The capabilities unlocked by the collaboration will apply to a range of defense applications across all domains; land, sea, air, space and cyber; according to the companies.
[Image courtesy: Lockheed Martin]