Lockheed Martin announced that Sikorsky Aircraft president Dan Schultz will retire early next year and be replaced by Paul Lemmo, currently Lockheed Martin’s v-p of integrated warfare systems and sensors. Schultz, a former U.S. Marine helicopter pilot, assumed Sikorsky’s top spot shortly after it was acquired by Lockheed Martin in 2014. He previously served as v-p of Lockheed Martin’s ship and aviation systems business line.
Under Schultz’s tenure, Sikorsky advanced military compound helicopter designs that became semi-finalists for the Army’s Future Attack and Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) and Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) programs, finished development and delivered the first CH-53K King Stallion heavy-lift helicopter to the Marines, won the Presidential Helicopter Replacement Program, and launched the S-92A+ and S-92B civil heavy helicopter upgrade programs.
However, largely under the weight of the collapse of offshore energy prices, sales of Sikorsky civil helicopters evaporated—it delivered only five for all of 2019 and just one through the first three quarters of 2020—and the company’s Coatesville, Pennsylvania production facility was kept open only after the intervention of President Trump and the state’s congressional delegation last year.