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wevigilo February 6th, 2008

Lockheed Martin

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The Way God Wants Things Done

The Lenten Season is a good time to evaluate how our life fits into the way God wants things done. The picture today is bleak. Poverty and violence abound and people suffer horribly. The gap between rich and poor seems unbridgeable. The global economy is floundering. Yet the merchants of death prosper. Lockheed Martin, the world’s top military contractor, had a 10% rise in profits during the last three months of 2007. That’s not 10% profit – that is a 10% rise in its already outrageous earnings. LM cleared a scandalous $0.8 billion in just those three months, over and above all material and personnel expenses. That gravy goes to stockholders who are already rich enough to invest in LM shares. LM prospers so well because America is investing hundreds of billions of dollars to forcefully pursue a foreign policy that dominates the world’s resources and ensures a cheap labor supply. Yes, it is time to evaluate.

I faced a similar evaluation 35 years ago while working at Lockheed’s Sunnyvale plant. The Trident missile program was just starting and I was a group engineer tasked with developing the Mark-500 MaRV – that’s a maneuvering warhead designed to evade enemy interceptors and deliver a hydrogen bomb on-target. I had to decide if this was really how God wants things done.

Today things are worse. LM still keeps Trident missiles on-station while managing the laboratories developing a new nuclear bomb – one that can be more readily used in regional wars such as with Iran. LM also builds the satellites to spy and navigate and communicate. It builds fighter planes and RPVs and whatever else the War Department needs. LM literally has its profit finger in every economic pie.

Evaluation of my work on Trident was scary back then. I could see what I should do – Trident was obviously an aggressive first-strike weapon — but Janet and I still had six children at home to support. Nevertheless, we worked and prayed together on our “escape plan” and then put it into action. We found life without Lockheed wasn’t as bad as expected. The real fear was anticipation. Tangible events can be dealt with.

That was 35 years ago and I’ve never regretted parting from Lockheed. I now have the freedom to do and say what I please. Working together put new excitement and romance into our marriage. I can now hold my head up and say I’m really trying to work in the way God wants things done. I highly recommend the change to anyone feeling snared in the Pentagon’s economic trap.

May peace be with you,

Bob Aldridge

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