Big winners in the past few weeks have been Lockheed Martin Corp. and soldiers in one Army combat team — in dollars and pounds, respectively. But a couple of wins by one Raytheon Co. division portend significant advances into the multibillion- dollar annual training market.

Lockheed nailed down a 10-year, $5.6 billion contract from the Defense Logistics Agency to oversee inventory and distribution of automotive parts for all U.S. military ground vehicles and will lead a team that will be providing services at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site under a 10-year, $3 billion contract.

Soldiers in one Stryker Brigade Combat team will drop nearly 10 pounds each. Under a $70 million contract, General Dynamics Corp. will supply its new version of the Land Warrior fighting system, which reduces the weight warfighters carry from 17 pounds to 7.2 pounds.

TREND WATCH
Raytheon’s new Global Training Solutions unit — part of Raytheon Technical Services Co. LLC of Reston, Va. — is paying off fast. The two-month-old GTS helped Raytheon nab two training contracts worth as much as $480 million over five years.

In August, it snagged a spot on the Navy’s five-year, $43 million, multiple-award, indefinite- delivery, indefinite-quantity contract to provide education and training solutions for the Naval Education and Training Professional Development and Technology Center. However, the big win was the $437 million award from the Federal Aviation Administration for the first five years of its Air Traffic Control Optimum Training Solution, said Stephen Teel, the RTSC senior vice president leading the new training unit. Raytheon snatched the award from incumbents Washington Consulting Group and University of Oklahoma.

GTS, which consolidates best practices and lessons learned from training efforts companywide, is structured to make that happen, Teel said. “The domain is important, but if we have a training methodology for designing, developing and optimizing training solutions, we believe it can be applied to any domain.”

Raytheon trains groups as disparate as NASA astronauts at Johnson Space Center in Houston and mechanics for General Motors Co.’s Mr. Goodwrench business. Last year, the company edged out General Dynamics on a 10-year, $11.2 billion training contract from the Army.

In 2007, training services contributed $555 million — or 2.6 percent of Raytheon’s $21.3 billion income. Teel declined to share strategic ambitions and growth-rate goals, but said, “We are looking at significant growth.”

MORE TO COME
It’s a growing market, especially in government, said Josh Bersin, president of training researcher Bersin and Associates.

“Corporate training spending grew at around 4 percent in 2007 and is growing at a slower rate in 2008,” he said. Annual spending went from $55.8 billion in 2006 to $58.5 billion in 2007.

“We believe that federal agency spending is growing at a slightly greater rate than corporate spending due largely to growth in federal budgets and federal headcount,” Bersin said. With validation for the new training unit returned so quickly, Raytheon will aggressively seek out new business, Teel said.

“We’ve got a long legacy in communications and the government marketplace,” he said. “We’re looking at a broad list of opportunities with different customers.”