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(Updates with economic data, recent oil price movement, world markets' overview and corporate stock

US equity futures were slightly higher pre-bell Friday as the major stock averages posted a rebound

The State Department notified Congress that it plans to sell Saudi Arabia up to 48 F-35 warplanes in a first-time sale that could be worth as much as $24.3 billion. The sale of the Lockheed Martin Corp. fighter jet to Saudi Arabia has been in the works for a number of years. President Donald Trump signaled in November the US would sell F-35s to the Kingdom, offering Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a prize he's long cherished, ahead of a visit to the White House that month. Meantime, the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin Corp. are moving to speed up the production of a new classified air-to-air missile for US Air Force and Navy jets that's seen as vital to deterring China. For more, we speak with Wayne Sanders, Senior Defense Research Analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.

Lockheed Martin’s CEO said the weapons maker was running ahead of schedule on its plan to more than triple production of sorely needed Patriot missiles. The massive orders will change the share of revenue that the company generates from missile sales, Taiclet said Thursday.

The Detroit automaker’s partnership with Lockheed Martin is a potential lift to America’s munitions supplies depleted by the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

The Department of Defense has been pushing contractors to ramp up production of critical munitions. RTX stock rose about 1% on Monday.

Applied Aerospace & Defense fell about 10% on Wednesday after its first earnings report since going public in June.

Northrop Grumman signed two agreements totaling $3 billion to speed up production of missile interceptors.

The Army modified its contract with Lockheed Martin to step-up production; the final cost will depend on congressional funding.

General Dynamics has managed to avoid much of the defense stock pain that came after fighting began in Iran. Wall Street was looking for earnings per share of $3.96 from sales of $13.5 billion. Operating profit margin was 10.4%, up 0.4 percentage point year-over-year.

Shares of Lockheed Martin and RTX are surging premarket after both companies reported swelling order books driven by strong demand for military hardware. Defense contractor Lockheed Martin lifted its full-year estimate of sales, per-share earnings and free cash flow as its book of orders for jets, missiles and other military products hit a record $230 billion.

The defense contractor says the new design could be fielded faster and cost less than half as much as its bestselling version.

Lockheed Martin's latest contract award from the U.S. Government adds to sales growth in the defense group's missiles division, Jefferies' Sheila Kahyaoglu wrote. The company signed a seven-year contract worth up to $35 billion for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptor missiles. The contract follows another government award for a significant ramp up in Patriot missile production, the analyst noted.

The Pentagon’s order of Thaad interceptors follows the company’s pledge to expand production over seven years.

Yahoo Finance Senior Reporter Brooke DiPalma joins Market Domination to tackle today's top trending tickers, including the momentum driving SpaceX (SPCX) shares in Friday's session after the company's IPO, the impact it is having on other space stocks Virgin Galactic (SPCE) and Rocket Lab (RKLB), and how semiconductor stocks such as Micron Technology (MU) and Nvidia (NVDA) are moving on the historic public offering.

Investing.com -- China is set to launch its Shenzhou-23 mission on Sunday, sending three astronauts to the Tiangong space station in a flight that could see one crew member remain in orbit for a full year, the longest human space mission in the country’s history.

Camden, Ark.—When the Pentagon put out an urgent call for rocket launchers and ammunition to send to Ukraine and replenish supplies at home in 2022, an answer came from an unlikely place: this remote southern pine-belt town, population around 10,000. Lockheed Martin one of the defense contractors clustered in the east part of Camden and already one of the town’s biggest employers, was reeling in government orders to produce more mobile rocket launchers. Other big defense contractors in the area also soon landed contracts to produce ammunition and expand their rocket facilities in Camden.

By Gabriel Araujo SAO PAULO, May 11 (Reuters) - Brazilian planemaker Embraer is in talks with Colombia and Chile for potential orders of its C-390 military transport aircraft, as it steps up output to

The U.S. Army is pushing defense contractors to open up weapons’ software to new tools, including AI.

Lockheed’s earnings miss sent the stock to fresh lows, but with guidance intact and the stock deeply oversold, the setup is starting to look attractive.

Investing.com -- Reacting to Trump’s latest decision, Germany’s Defence Minister, Boris Pistorius, said: "The presence of U.S. soldiers in Europe and especially Germany is in our interest and the interest of the U.S."He added that his country was growing its armed forces, procuring more equipment more quickly, and building more infrastructure."