Lockheed CFO: Hypersonics efforts will likely be consolidated into one or two production programs

Early hypersonics efforts will likely "get necked down" into one or two production programs in future years, the chief financial officer of Lockheed Martin said today.

Speaking at a Credit Suisse conference, Ken Possenriede praised his company's focus on "attacking" hypersonics work as a corporation.

"We've done a nice job of mainly the space business, aeronautics, missiles and fire control, working in an integrated fashion," he said. "In parallel, you've had the customer set work more in alliance than you've normally seen."

Possenriede touted Lockheed’s awards in the Tactical Boost Glide and Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon programs, among others.

"This is all programs that are in development, prototype," he said, noting some of these programs will soon do first launches.

"Then I think what you’ll see is a lot of these programs will get necked down, morph into one or two programs and then become production programs," Possenriede added, noting that Lockheed speculates there could be production programs worth $5 billion over the next couple of years.