Lockheed martin secured 2.97 billion missle defense contract.

Missile Defense Agency issued Lockheed Martin a sole source contract worth up to $2.97 billion to upgrade the Aegis ballistic missile defense combat system, according to a Tuesday Pentagon contract announcement.
Lockheed’s Rotary and Mission Systems business in Moorestown, New Jersey, will do the work for the Combat System Engineering Agent award for the next 10 years, the announcement reads.

The Aegis ballistic missile defense combat system is on the Navy’s guided-missile destroyers and guided-missile cruisers. The contract for the software upgrades covers both types of surface ships, the Aegis system for Guam, the Ashore systems in Poland and Romania and the hypersonic Glide Phase Interceptor, according to the contract announcement.

“LM RMS will provide execution of future studies, concepts, and computer program development to achieve capability improvements across all phases of the fire control loop (plan, detect, control, engage, and assess) in accordance with government provided interface requirements that can be delivered to the CSEA or other government designated agents for integration into the Common Source Library, and/or Integrated Combat Systems software architecture (e.g., advanced discrimination to counter advanced threats, closure of potential missile defense gaps, and enhanced defense against adversary advanced threats, improved single-ship performance of current dual tier engagement schemes, expansion to incorporate multi-tier weapons, and integration of advancements in Tactical Data Link architectures),” reads the announcement.

Lockheed has served as the prime contractor for upgrades to the Aegis missile system since 1995, USNI News previously reported. In 2013, Lockheed beat Raytheon and Boeing in a bid to upgrade the Aegis combat system. It was the first competition Lockheed faced for the contract in years.

Good write-up Nature.. I would say that the geo-political "temperature" is probably more important to the prospects of any of these individual defense contractors (like Lockheed) than anything else.  And now that things seem to be settling down (for now) in the Middle East, I would expect these companies to give back some of their gains this year, including Lockheed as you mentioned. 

"ITA"  is the iShares U.S. aerospace and defense ETF.   If I were to make a bet on the geo-political temperature (something I'm not interested in doing), investing in this ETF is probably a safer route.   Lockheed is a holding in the ETF, as well as the other usual suspects in defense contractors like Boeing, L3 Harris, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics, just to name a few...