ROCKVILLE, MD, 06/06/2000 --

Lockheed Martin Air Traffic Management, a business unit of Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT), announced today that the Common Automated Radar Terminal System (ARTS) upgrade effort has been completed with the acceptance by the FAA of the final and 136th site, Huntington, West Virginia.

Completed in 27 months, on budget, the Common ARTS air traffic control system upgrade provides new modern computers for air traffic controllers at 136 of the FAA's approach control facilities nationwide. Included in that number are the nation's five busiest terminal facilities in New York, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver and Southern California.

Delivering and transitioning 136 systems to live ATC facilities at the rate of five-to-six per month is a remarkable achievement, says Don Antonucci, president of Lockheed Martin Air Traffic Management. Such response to customer requirements is a hallmark in which we take great pride.

Common ARTS replaces 30-year old equipment with highly reliable commercial-off-the-shelf processors. The work that was performed by a room full of computers is now performed by a set of redundant microcomputers that fit into a single 19-inch rack.

The Common ARTS deployment, which began in February 1998, was expanded earlier this year to include new sites at the Northern California, Atlanta, Potomac, Minneapolis, and St. Louis terminal facilities. This expanded deployment begins this summer and provides a platform for the FAA's implementation of its latest modernization initiative, Free Flight. Once upgraded to Common ARTS, Atlanta, St. Louis, and Minneapolis will use the Center-TRACON Automation System's (CTAS) Final Approach Spacing Tool (FAST), which provides airlines with more beneficial arrival sequencing. This Free Flight tool will reduce fuel consumption and increase controller and airline efficiency.

All Common ARTS facilities run the same software, share common hardware architecture and employ an open system design, which enables it to run on various hardware platforms and facilitates easy upgrades and enhancements. The common hardware architecture simplifies maintenance support and reduces overall life cycle costs. Because all Common ARTS terminal control facilities run the same software baseline, the process for maintenance, upgrades and enhancements is simplified, resulting in reduced costs and more timely implementations.

A leader in airspace management solutions, Lockheed Martin Air Traffic Management customers currently include the FAA and international civil aviation authorities in the United Kingdom, Germany, Korea, the People's Republic of China and Argentina. Lockheed Martin Air Traffic Management employs approximately 1,100 people at major facilities in Rockville, Maryland, Atlantic City, New Jersey, Eagan, Minnesota, and Southampton, England.