SALINA — Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) is “likely” to add jobs at its suburban Syracuse plant after the company announced a deal on a joint venture to provide Germany with an air and missile defense system. 

Lockheed Martin, a Bethesda, Maryland–based defense contractor, and MBDA Deutschland on March 8 announced a new joint venture to pursue “TLVS,” the next generation integrated air and missile defense system for the German Bundeswehr, or the nation’s armed forces.  TLVS is short for Taktisches Luftverteidigungssystem.

The joint venture is expected to become the prime contractor for the new system, which is currently being negotiated with Germany’s procurement office for the Bundeswehr, BAAINBw, Lockheed Martin said in a news release.

“We cannot provide a firm number of jobs because this work is still being negotiated, but the plan is to bring the surveillance-radar work back to Syracuse, which will likely create jobs. And right now we are only talking about the German contract. With Germany as the launch customer for this system, we anticipate that other countries will want this needed capability in the future as well,” Gregory Kee, managing director of TLVS/MEADS at Lockheed Martin, said in a statement to CNYBJ on March 12.

Both Kee and Dietmar Thelen, representing MBDA, will lead the company from the MBDA Deutschland office in Schrobenhausen, Germany. 

Besides Lockheed’s Salina plant, the company will also have operations in Dallas, Texas and Huntsville, Alabama, as well as Ulm and Koblenz, Germany. 

Kee and Thelen both have “extensive” backgrounds with the armed forces, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and defense-procurement organizations. They also have “strong” experience in military, industrial, and international affairs, Lockheed Martin said.

“The public figure the German government provided for the program was 4 billion Euros, but again we are in negotiations and the final contract value is to be determined,” Kee said in the statement.

About TLVS

TLVS will leverage the development results and experiences from the $4 billion investment of the trilateral MEADS program involving the U.S., Germany, and Italy. It’ll also “deepen” the U.S.-European partnership through a continued, shared commitment to local industry, safety, and security. MEADS is short for medium extended air-defense system. 

TLVS is a modern system that will “transform” Germany’s defense capabilities and “enable this key NATO framework nation to set an important precedent in how neighboring nations address current and evolving threats for decades to come,” per the release.