Lockheed Martin, a longtime leader in harnessing artificial intelligence to boost defense and aerospace capabilities, is once again reshaping the future of AI-driven innovation. In a new collaboration, IBM’s high-performing, enterprise-ready Granite large language models (LLMs) will be integrated into Lockheed Martin’s AI Factory tools, which are accessed by more than 10,000 Lockheed Martin developers and engineers.
Lockheed Martin’s AI Factory environment accelerates ideas to deployment, from months to mere weeks, seamlessly integrating commercial best practices, establishing end-to-end development pipelines, and implementing rigorous data governance to drive greater efficiency and resource optimization. IBM’s Granite LLMs will further empower Lockheed Martin’s workforce with cutting-edge code, language, advanced reasoning and guardrail capabilities to customize assistants and agents, enhance national security missions, and accelerate business transformation.
By leveraging this integration, Lockheed Martin and IBM aim to set new standards for innovation to help streamline mission-critical insights and enhance decision-making capabilities across defense and aerospace domains.
Expert perspectives
“To have the best AI capability available to our customers, we continue to invest and innovate in AI across our portfolio,” said Dr. Steven H. Walker, Lockheed Martin vice president and chief technology officer. “A critical pillar of the strategy is integrating the best capabilities available in the commercial world with our already demonstrated and deployed industry leading AI products and technology.”
“IBM is excited to work with Lockheed Martin to bring the power of our Granite large language models to their AI factory,” said Vanessa Hunt, technology general manager, U.S. federal market, IBM. “Collaborations like ours, built on a foundation of responsibility and open innovation, are critical to shaping a future where AI significantly contributes to defense without compromising security, capability, readiness or societal values.”
Background
Lockheed Martin aligns AI initiatives with the U.S. Defense Department’s five AI Ethics principles – Responsible, Equitable, Traceable, Reliable, and Governable – ensuring that all projects adhere to these core tenets. To foster a deep understanding of AI ethics across the corporation, Lockheed Martin has developed and implemented an internal AI ethics training program to equip employees with an understanding of the capabilities and limitations of AI so they can apply the technology in a responsible way.
The complexity of the global security environment is evolving rapidly, so Lockheed Martin is providing 21st Century Security solutions through collaboration with national security customers, technology and telecommunications companies, and U.S. allies and strategic partners around the world.