Lockheed Martin spends billions a year with outside suppliers. It builds the F-35, missile defense systems, satellites, and helicopters, and almost none of that is made entirely in-house. If you run a small or diverse-owned business that touches machining, electronics, IT services, logistics, or specialized manufacturing, LM is a name worth chasing.
The catch: registering with Lockheed Martin and winning work from Lockheed Martin are two separate processes. Registration is a web form. The contract comes later, through a competitive invitation that may not arrive for months or years. LM says this plainly on its own supplier pages: "While there is no guaranteed way to become a supplier." Treat the registration as the start of a relationship, not a transaction.
Here's how the process actually runs, and where a certified diverse-owned firm gets an edge.
Step one: the Supplier Marketing PortalNew suppliers do not start in LM's purchasing system. They start by submitting a company profile through the Supplier Marketing Portal, a web form Lockheed Martin runs to collect your capabilities, commodities, certifications, and geographic coverage.
What happens to that submission is the part most people miss. LM puts your profile in front of its buyers and, in its own words, sends "specific information on your capabilities to those employees who have requested information on suppliers in your specific area of focus." So a buyer working a program that needs your exact part or service can find you. That's the mechanism. There's no queue, no application number, no decision date.
Two operational details from LM's own FAQ are worth knowing before you submit. A complete profile is retained for about five years. An incomplete one gets deleted after roughly a year. Fill in every field, especially your NAICS or commodity codes, your certifications, and a tight description of what you actually build or do. A vague profile reads as noise.
Step two: get found by a programMost Lockheed Martin work flows through long-term corporate or site agreements. LM describes "windows of opportunity" that range from annual re-competes to decade-long cycles tied to a specific aircraft or weapons program. When a window opens, buyers invite suppliers to bid. You want to be on that invite list before the window opens, not scrambling after.
That means the marketing portal is necessary but not sufficient. The suppliers who break in usually also:
- Show up at outreach events. LM tells prospective suppliers directly to "meet influencers" at industry days and matchmaking sessions. Buyers and Small Business Liaison Officers staff these. A five-minute face-to-face does more than a cold profile.
- Target a real niche. LM looks for "complimentary commodities" and suppliers with "a strong and stable history of delivering on their contracts." Generic capability statements lose. A firm that machines a specific titanium component to AS9100 tolerances wins attention.
- Find the Small Business Liaison Officer. Every major LM site has one. They are the internal advocate for small and diverse suppliers, and they know which programs are sourcing.
When a buyer brings you on, you transact through Exostar, the aerospace and defense trading exchange LM uses as its supplier gateway. You'll set up an account on the Managed Access Gateway (MAG), which gives you single sign-on into LMP2P (Lockheed Martin Procure to Pay). That's where purchase orders, bids, and invoicing live.
You don't touch Exostar as a prospect. It comes after a buyer relationship exists. Approved suppliers also do an annual self-certification update inside Exostar to keep their profile current, so plan for that as a recurring task once you're in.
What Lockheed Martin's small business program actually tracksThis is the part that gets oversold elsewhere, so be precise about it.
Lockheed Martin runs a Small Business Programs function that supports its negotiated subcontracting goals with the federal government. As a prime on defense contracts, LM commits to spending targets across federal small business categories and then reports against them. The categories it tracks:
- Small businesses
- Small disadvantaged businesses
- HUBZone-certified businesses
- Women-owned small businesses
- Veteran-owned small businesses
- Service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses
Notice what's on that list and what isn't. These are the federal small business socioeconomic categories, the same ones the SBA defines. This is a government-contracting framework, because LM's customer is the government. You will not find NMSDC's MBE, WBENC's WBE, NGLCC's LGBTBE, or Disability:IN's DOBE certifications driving LM's small business goals the way they drive a Fortune 500 commercial buyer like Target or Walmart. LM's supplier diversity is wired to the Federal Acquisition Regulation, not to corporate NMSDC reporting.
One more honest point. LM states it has "no set-aside opportunities where funding is tied to small business status." There is no pot of money reserved for diverse suppliers that you can apply into. What the categories do is give buyers a reason to invite you, and give LM credit toward its federal subcontracting commitments when they buy from you. Your certification is a tiebreaker and a door-opener, not a guaranteed allocation.
Certifications: self-certify or get SBA-certifiedFor most of those categories you self-certify your status in your profile. Two require official SBA certification: HUBZone and service-disabled veteran-owned (SDVOSB). Those can't be self-attested.
A change to plan around: effective February 1, 2026, Lockheed Martin requires all small businesses identifying as woman-owned or veteran-owned to certify through the SBA, not just self-declare. If you've been operating on a self-certification for WOSB or VOSB, get your SBA certification filed before you submit, or your status won't hold up in LM's system.
If you're working out which federal certifications you actually qualify for and want them filed across the SBA and state agencies in one pass instead of one portal at a time, that's what CertifyAll handles. Get the certification right first; it's the credential LM's buyers and liaison officers screen on.
The programs worth knowingBeyond the registration mechanics, Lockheed Martin runs a few named programs that matter for a growing supplier:
- Mentor Protege Program. This is LM's participation in the Department of Defense Mentor-Protege Program, where a large prime develops the technical and business capabilities of a small business over a multi-year engagement. It's selective. LM looks for protégés with a shared technical vision, an existing or natural supplier relationship, financial stability, and the bandwidth to commit to roughly a three-year program. LM has won multiple Nunn-Perry Awards, the DoD's top recognition for these partnerships. Recent protégés have included woman-owned and specialized aerospace firms working on programs like Next Generation Interceptor. You don't apply cold; you get there by being a strong supplier first.
- AbilityOne. A federal program through which LM procures services from nonprofits employing people who are blind or have significant disabilities, covering things like facility management, document management, and IT data processing.
- Veteran Institute of Procurement (VIP) training. LM supports VIP, a training program for veteran small business owners learning to compete in the federal contracting market.
SupplierPay is the other one to know once you're transacting: LM pledged accelerated payment to small business suppliers, which helps working capital when you're carrying inventory or labor on a defense timeline.
The realistic on-rampIf you're starting from zero, here's the honest sequence:
- Lock down your certifications. Self-certify where you can; get SBA-certified for HUBZone, SDVOSB, and (from February 2026) WOSB and VOSB.
- Build a sharp capability statement around one or two real niches, not a generalist pitch.
- Submit a complete profile to the Supplier Marketing Portal and fill every field.
- Find the Small Business Liaison Officer at the LM site nearest your work, and get to an outreach event.
- Expect the first invitation to take time, and treat Exostar onboarding as the milestone that means it's real.
Lockheed Martin is one prime among many, and the same federal small business framework opens doors at Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics. If you'd rather see which corporate and prime programs match your certifications side by side, our corporate program directory lays them out so you can target the ones where your profile actually fits. And if you want buyers to find you the way LM's buyers search the marketing portal, list your business in the supplier directory so your capabilities are discoverable.
For the broader playbook on getting into corporate supplier diversity programs, including the commercial Fortune 500 side where NMSDC and WBENC certifications carry more weight than they do at a defense prime, read our guide to getting into corporate supplier diversity programs.
