Dive Brief:
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Government defense contractor Lockheed Martin is building a $350 million satellite factory at its Waterton Canyon campus in Littleton, CO, The Denver Post reported.
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The 266,000-square-foot production facility will grow the total footprint of the campus to 3.5 million. There, the company will have enough space to build five A2100 satellites at once and test them in the same building, cutting down production time.
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Construction is expected to be finished by 2020, and Lockheed said it will employ 1,500 contractors. The company has more than 4,000 employees in Littleton, and the new facility will help accommodate growth there.
Dive Insight:
Defense technology companies like Lockheed, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman stand to benefit financially when lawmakers increase defense spending. President Donald Trump, who promised during his presidential campaign that his administration would beef up military capabilities and readiness, increased military spending in his 2018 budget proposal. The latest House appropriations bill beats the president's numbers by $30 billion and is $60 billion more than current defense allocations.
Despite increasing defense spending, both the House and the Senate rejected Trump's efforts to slash certain infrastructure spending programs. While House lawmakers lined up with the president's proposed cuts to the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants, they allotted $1.5 billion more in discretionary spending to the U.S. Department of Transportation than the president proposed, even though that figure is still 8% below what the agency now receives.
In its version of the 2018 budget, the Senate lays out a plan to increase infrastructure funding significantly, most notably in the areas the president proposed to cut. A U.S. Senate appropriations subcommittee late last month boosted TIGER grant funding by $50 million, for a total of $550 million; allocated $19.5 billion to the USDOT for discretionary spending; set aside $2.1 billion for the Capital Investment Grant program; and gave Amtrak $1.6 billion.
The panel is chaired by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). Her assertion that the White House was "incredibly irresponsible" in its transportation cuts indicates that when it comes to infrastructure, the president, just as in the healthcare debate, may not be able to rely on party loyalty in executing his agenda.