Lockheed Martin [LMT] has been in discussions with various countries around the world to market its version of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) already in production for the U.S. Navy, a company executive recently said.
Several nations have shown “active interest” in the Multi-Mission Combatant (MMC), the name Lockheed Martin has assigned the vessel for the international market, Tom Cosgrove, the company’s director of business development for the MMC, told reporters Oct. 19.
Lockheed Martin builds the Freedom variant of LCS and earlier this year delivered the second of that variant, the USS Fort Worth (LCS-3), to the Navy.
Unlike the Navy’s program of swappable mission packages for the LCS, the international version would be a fixed multi-mission ship, Cosgrove said. The Navy is procuring separate modular mission packages for anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare and mine clearing.
Lockheed Martin opted to go with the fixed systems internationally based on feedback the company has received from other countries, Cosgrove said.
“We’re offering them complete ships,” he said, declining to identify the countries showing interest.