It's All About Saving Trees

Take heart, environmentalists. U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. sees your point of view when it comes to saving trees and saving money, too. The maker of fighter planes and communication networks for the military is about to replace its paper instruction manuals for all its F-16 fighter plane with a computer-based system. Some 1.4 million pages of data will eventually appear online.

When the system launches later this year, Lockheed's military plane unit will join defense contractor Boeing Co., as well as leading-edge technology companies in the Internet age. Tech firms have long encouraged customers to get most of their instruction from Web sites, and Boeing in 1995 made electronic manuals the standard for its newest F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets. Lockheed's move suggests the trend is spreading.

"It's quite a savings in paper and ink, as well as handling and bundling costs," Geoff White, Lockheed's senior manager for publications in Fort Worth (TX.) told Reuters. "The savings could exceed hundreds of millions of dollars."

The Fighting Falcon's 250 manuals comprise some 50,000 pages in total. Currently there are more than 4,100 planes in the field, spread around 20 countries. And each order calls for multiple copies of documents. Even more stacks of paper are required when a change is made on any plane; updates are slow and expensive. The U.S. Air Force alone could conserve more than $500 million in printing and paper costs over the next 40 years, Lockheed said in a statement.

"Whenever you have a new country or a new block of the aircraft that comes on board, that's a lot of ink and a lot of paper," said White.

Environmentalists applaud the move. Their only complaint? It hasn't happened sooner.

"It's a good idea and ought to be implemented more," said Carl Zichella, a regional staff director for the Sierra Club.

FMI: www.lmaeronautics.com