It Starts With Maintainers: The Launch Salute
The launch salute highlights the unspoken bond between ground crew and aircrew. One common motion between pilot and maintainer that echoes trust, comradery and dedication to the mission.
This salute is where sustainment and global readiness is personified on the flight line. At Lockheed Martin, We’re Ready When the Mission Calls.
A Maintainer's Perspective: Why We're Flight Line Obsessed
Steve Sheehy, Vice President, Sustainment Strategy and Business Development, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics
As once an aircraft maintenance officer, I now have one goal in my industry life: make the maintainer’s life better on the flight line.
As a maintainer, it is the flight line where our freedom of action is, where the will to act is where one gets moral and physical strength. Getting the flight line right defines a successful mission – our technologies, prognostic health management and optimized supply chain make it possible.
My entire 25 plus years in the Air Force and even as a small child watching fighters, every cockpit canopy opened from front to back. Working with engineers at Lockheed Martin and walking with them on the flight line I noticed something different about the F-35 – the canopy opens from back to front, hinging on the front of the aircraft. Once explained it was clear this design was because the team engineered it for sustainment, making the ejection seat more accessible for maintainers.
It's this type of thinking that we’re developing with our customers every day. Making the lives easier for the boots on the ground who make missions successful in the sky. If deployed or at home, the maintainer’s mission culminates on the flight line – it is truly Lockheed Martin’s center of gravity.
In my blood, I am an aircraft maintainer. Now on the Lockheed Martin side, I’m here to share with the maintainer community that we are in this together. Your mission is mine – I feel that every day. I’m walking virtually with you every day and am jealous I’m not physically by your side.