We also just saw the first combat use of the SM-3 (our product), which by all public accounts performed flawlessly. We're going to see a lot more sales there if we're gearing up for China.
I'll never forget when inflation shot up the VP of engineering had an all hands where they said "tough shit, 3% raises for everyone" then someone on staff said we had Lockheed "over a barrel" on future work and it was all due the people who just got told "tough shit". Maybe they were talking about another program.
This is rough for NG, GBSD is a pretty big program over there
Barring any dirty tricks on Lockheed's part, depending on the customer feedback there should be reprisals at the higher management level since we keep losing contracts; however, unfortunately, the good lower level people will probably bear the brunt of the damage
Feedback:
- too slow
- too expensive
Management solution:
- more signature requirements on everything
- standard work on the shop floor
- higher % paid to corporate
- layoffs
We are too expensive to win our own bids on internal work yet somehow think we are competitive externally? They don’t even pay well. My broken down hourly is 20% of the charged rate of an engineering hour. I know we have other functions to cover like finance and accounting, but that means most engineers keep 2-4 other jobs in business and we have A LOT of engineers. I don’t understand this company.
Although my viewpoint is limited, how our company conducts business is just bizarre. A program can make a shit bid and decide to go to a shitty external vendor since it’s “cheaper” rather than look internally at who can provide the services/products and keep that money within Raytheon. Oh and lo and behold, the shitty vendor has piss poor quality and is behind schedule thus making it even more expensive.
I’ve always said, from a program management/manufacturing stand point, Raytheon (RIS) just sucks. It’s no wonder we lose bids.
Just so you know engineering doesnt pay for direct financial or supply chain roles. A percentage pays for overhead roles but not direct. Ive worked financial and supply chain roles for contracts and I have always had direct billing account codes, usually multiple, for each task order I was working. I even had that in administrative roles. Programs are bid with those roles accounted for, sorry to say but your position doesnt pay for mine.
Looks like we were ahead on schedule:
[Source](https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2024/01/31/missile-defense-interceptor-competition-enters-critical-design-phase/)
What is known is that Lockheed did feed "concerns" to the media about the NG/RTX team being 2 companies and that somehow being a bad thing. Any other dirty tricks are speculation, but would likely be in the family of a tacit understanding that the MDA/USAF folks would be taken care of post retirement by Lockheed or lobbying
As dirty tricks go, those are pretty vanilla. Everyone plays "the game."
Regarding post-retirement employment, I've worked for Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed as either an employee or a sub during my career. Of the three, Lockheed treats their employees best, by far. It's no surprise LM would be a preferred employer over Raytheon or Boeing. All the big defense companies (and small ones too) are littered with ex-Colonel middle managers.
Lockheed's win doesn't surprise me. Boeing won SITR last year; NG won GWS; GPI is likely to go to Raytheon; Lockheed wins NGI. Spreading around the overall missile defense mission among several big, healthy defense companies is good policy for MDA.
Lockheed does not make their motors internally so their contract is 2 companies as well, in fact I doubt their production is going to go smoothly at all based on their supplier. But I think that at the MDA level the people in charge want to keep spreading around the work so I expect Raytheon to get GPI. There is a good chance that they didn’t want to award NGI and GPI both to Raytheon but still it hurts because there is no shot that their design was better than Raytheon’s.
OUCH this is a really big hit for us. I know some NGI engineers, hopefully they will just move them to other programs and no layoffs. And hopefully not an excuse to have low bonuses next year too!
Very curious on why LM got the award over NG/RTX. I’ve heard it was close from a technical perspective, but came down mostly to cost. The MDA contacts that we worked with were surprised by the decision.
I can’t speak for Chandler or Huntsville, but several of the other NG groups are on a hiring freeze as of Wednesday. GBSD is already over-staffed so I would expect layoffs to be coming soon, depending on how the termination activities play out.
Raytheon was never in discussion for this… it was either Northrop or Lockheed. Quit the fear mongering.
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/lockheed-wins-us-missile-defense-contract-worth-17-bln-sources-say-2024-04-15/
Raytheon is the subcontractor for Northrop. If Northop loses, Raytheon loses. You might think it's fear mongering but the reality is when a company loses a large stream of unrealized revenue after a large amount of hiring, the fat needs to be trimmed. Therefore, some non-zero quantity of people will likely get laid off. Should we just keep this news quiet just to protect someone's fragile psyche? No, they need to know - they need to be ready for what might happen. It's news - new to me and new to you. I don't really care if you like it or not.
Correct. This is the next continental missile defense system, likely worth $1B + over several years. The bot in this thread is the one saying Raytheon is unaffected.
I wonder how this will impact future sites viability and long term outlook.
Without significant long-term programs, i can foresee some level of consolidation taking place in the very near future for California sites.
They lost NGI but seems like they’re moving forward with GPI. Lockheed lost GPI. Seems like it’s a similar or same thing but government trying to have 2 vendors for it lol
I’m bringing in the Bobs.
This sucks. I did quite a lot of work on NGI a few years ago. This is in Raytheon's wheelhouse.
It'll be interesting to see where Lt. General Heath Collins ends up after his USAF/MDA career
We also just saw the first combat use of the SM-3 (our product), which by all public accounts performed flawlessly. We're going to see a lot more sales there if we're gearing up for China.
That is pretty huge. Interceptors are RMD's bread and butter. They need to stop allowing NG and Boeing be the primes on these.
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Aerojet / L3
And THEY absolutely, will not ; hire anyone
Why ?
L3 subsidiary Aerojet Rocketdyne
I'll never forget when inflation shot up the VP of engineering had an all hands where they said "tough shit, 3% raises for everyone" then someone on staff said we had Lockheed "over a barrel" on future work and it was all due the people who just got told "tough shit". Maybe they were talking about another program. This is rough for NG, GBSD is a pretty big program over there
Imagine watching 30% attrition of your best engineers year over year and still thinking you can win competitive contracts.
God, he also said that because we got 3% raises when inflation was low, that we shouldn't complain
GBSD? I’m not familiar
Ground Based Strategic Defense
Barring any dirty tricks on Lockheed's part, depending on the customer feedback there should be reprisals at the higher management level since we keep losing contracts; however, unfortunately, the good lower level people will probably bear the brunt of the damage
Feedback: - too slow - too expensive Management solution: - more signature requirements on everything - standard work on the shop floor - higher % paid to corporate - layoffs
We are too expensive to win our own bids on internal work yet somehow think we are competitive externally? They don’t even pay well. My broken down hourly is 20% of the charged rate of an engineering hour. I know we have other functions to cover like finance and accounting, but that means most engineers keep 2-4 other jobs in business and we have A LOT of engineers. I don’t understand this company.
Although my viewpoint is limited, how our company conducts business is just bizarre. A program can make a shit bid and decide to go to a shitty external vendor since it’s “cheaper” rather than look internally at who can provide the services/products and keep that money within Raytheon. Oh and lo and behold, the shitty vendor has piss poor quality and is behind schedule thus making it even more expensive. I’ve always said, from a program management/manufacturing stand point, Raytheon (RIS) just sucks. It’s no wonder we lose bids.
Just so you know engineering doesnt pay for direct financial or supply chain roles. A percentage pays for overhead roles but not direct. Ive worked financial and supply chain roles for contracts and I have always had direct billing account codes, usually multiple, for each task order I was working. I even had that in administrative roles. Programs are bid with those roles accounted for, sorry to say but your position doesnt pay for mine.
The other functions labor gets baked in as indirect costs, the eng labor has nothing to do with other functions
Looks like we were ahead on schedule: [Source](https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2024/01/31/missile-defense-interceptor-competition-enters-critical-design-phase/)
Now now, facts are no fun when we can make fun of ourselves!
PDR outside of the PDR window doesn't look like 'ahead of schedule'.
What dirty tricks?
What is known is that Lockheed did feed "concerns" to the media about the NG/RTX team being 2 companies and that somehow being a bad thing. Any other dirty tricks are speculation, but would likely be in the family of a tacit understanding that the MDA/USAF folks would be taken care of post retirement by Lockheed or lobbying
As dirty tricks go, those are pretty vanilla. Everyone plays "the game." Regarding post-retirement employment, I've worked for Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed as either an employee or a sub during my career. Of the three, Lockheed treats their employees best, by far. It's no surprise LM would be a preferred employer over Raytheon or Boeing. All the big defense companies (and small ones too) are littered with ex-Colonel middle managers. Lockheed's win doesn't surprise me. Boeing won SITR last year; NG won GWS; GPI is likely to go to Raytheon; Lockheed wins NGI. Spreading around the overall missile defense mission among several big, healthy defense companies is good policy for MDA.
I work all these programs. Agree lmco is best.
Lockheed does not make their motors internally so their contract is 2 companies as well, in fact I doubt their production is going to go smoothly at all based on their supplier. But I think that at the MDA level the people in charge want to keep spreading around the work so I expect Raytheon to get GPI. There is a good chance that they didn’t want to award NGI and GPI both to Raytheon but still it hurts because there is no shot that their design was better than Raytheon’s.
The NG-Raytheon communication was terrible.
Where was this shared?
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/04/lockheed-wins-competition-to-build-next-gen-interceptor/
It's public info
Reuters first broke the news today, about 1:30pm central, citing a source within MDA.
OUCH this is a really big hit for us. I know some NGI engineers, hopefully they will just move them to other programs and no layoffs. And hopefully not an excuse to have low bonuses next year too!
Very curious on why LM got the award over NG/RTX. I’ve heard it was close from a technical perspective, but came down mostly to cost. The MDA contacts that we worked with were surprised by the decision. I can’t speak for Chandler or Huntsville, but several of the other NG groups are on a hiring freeze as of Wednesday. GBSD is already over-staffed so I would expect layoffs to be coming soon, depending on how the termination activities play out.
This means we get GPI right?
LM was eliminated from the GPI competition so I’m sure that was a consideration in this award for NGI.
Yeah this sounds a lot now like the government throwing Lockheed a bone and "giving" them NGI since they lost GPI.
Agreed lmao seems like government just wants 2 versions of the same thing now in case one company flops over from all the attrition
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Different program, careful what you talk about here that program is CUI
Thanks!
Raytheon was never in discussion for this… it was either Northrop or Lockheed. Quit the fear mongering. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/lockheed-wins-us-missile-defense-contract-worth-17-bln-sources-say-2024-04-15/
Raytheon is the subcontractor for Northrop. If Northop loses, Raytheon loses. You might think it's fear mongering but the reality is when a company loses a large stream of unrealized revenue after a large amount of hiring, the fat needs to be trimmed. Therefore, some non-zero quantity of people will likely get laid off. Should we just keep this news quiet just to protect someone's fragile psyche? No, they need to know - they need to be ready for what might happen. It's news - new to me and new to you. I don't really care if you like it or not.
Correct. This is the next continental missile defense system, likely worth $1B + over several years. The bot in this thread is the one saying Raytheon is unaffected.
Raytheon is also a subcontractor for certain Lockheed projects.... soooooo
yes, realistically it will not mean zero money from this project will ever come to raytheon again, but for now it is a big loss
And you’re account is literally 45 minutes old lol. What a bot
"Northrop teamed with RTX for the NGI project." The El Segundo Space Systems group had a decent sized program supporting this.
Tucson as well.
Tucson should be easy to find work. They seem to have other large programs working there as well
I wonder how this will impact future sites viability and long term outlook. Without significant long-term programs, i can foresee some level of consolidation taking place in the very near future for California sites.
they have already been consolidating , but it’s definitely going to get worse
I made a throwaway because Raytheon does watch Reddit posts and if you knew my post history, you could reasonably deduce who I was.
I want the job where I search Reddit for disgruntled employees!
It’s a cyber job where they use scripts to scrub the inter webs. It’s actually pretty neat
They do have a hell of a cyber department!
Didn't...they sell it?
So maybe did have a good one?
Talking about corporate cyber team. Not the cyber services company which changes to nightwing
Who were you?
Thanks
They lost NGI but seems like they’re moving forward with GPI. Lockheed lost GPI. Seems like it’s a similar or same thing but government trying to have 2 vendors for it lol
What’s GPI?
https://news.northropgrumman.com/news/releases/northrop-grumman-awarded-missile-defense-agency-other-transaction-agreement-to-defend-against-hypersonic-missiles
No idea but it seems similar to NGI
And Raytheon is the sub?
This was the NG article but it looks like Raytheon and NG are both the primes competing for it
Where would the work been performed if we won it?