Napoli Shkolnik filed a $4.25 billion federal lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (Case No. 1:26-cv-646) on behalf of SDR Group (Sustainable Development Resources, LLC), a Puerto Rico-based geophysical surveying and logistics technology company, against Lockheed Martin Corporation, one of the world’s largest defense contractors, and eight co-defendants.

The complaint alleges a multi-year insider scheme in which Lockheed Martin employees, consultants, and certain suppliers acted as trusted advisors to the SDR Group while covertly working to misappropriate the plaintiffs’ proprietary business model to launch a competing aerospace venture, AT2 Aerospace. The defendants allegedly cut SDR Group out of a Lockheed Martin-proposed and negotiated $3.4 billion deal.

“This case exposes a brazen betrayal of trust and a calculated scheme to appropriate a multi-billion-dollar opportunity,” said Hunter J. Shkolnik, founding partner at Napoli Shkolnik. “Our clients poured years of effort, expertise, and significant capital into developing a groundbreaking commercial model, only to have their innovations and business prospects allegedly stolen by Lockheed Martin and its co-conspirators. You cannot invite a counterparty to open its books under confidentiality, take its designs, deal pipeline, and client-funded development, and then lock it out for the benefit of insiders. We are committed to holding every defendant accountable.”

SDR Group spent years developing a first-of-its-kind commercial platform: a multi-sensor geophysical surveying system designed to be deployed aboard Lockheed Martin's hybrid airship, complete with proprietary sensor integration architecture, a curated supplier pipeline, and a commercialization strategy built around defense offset credits.

The initiative was designed to advance next-generation aerospace and geophysical survey capabilities with the power to map and service strategic resources at national scale. With this technology, the U.S. would have improved access to critical minerals, including lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements, that are essential to defense systems, advanced technology, and clean energy infrastructure, and whose supply chains are currently dominated by China.

SDR Group said: “We had the technology, the sovereign partnerships, and the platform to enable faster resource identification and more precise mapping than anything currently deployed, which would have helped break China's chokehold on U.S. and allied critical mineral security. Our objective with this case is to reinforce that innovation partnerships, particularly those funded with U.S. government grants and touching strategic technologies and national security, are conducted with transparency and respect for the innovators who create them.”

At the center of this case are hybrid airship and advanced sensing technologies, developed with U.S. government research funding, with the goal of transitioning breakthrough capabilities into operational and commercial deployment. Between 2010 and 2018, Lockheed Martin repeatedly attempted to commercialize the airship platform, but those efforts failed to gain traction and by 2018 the program was effectively dormant.

In 2018, SDR Group's technological innovation and commercialization model renewed serious momentum for Lockheed Martin’s hybrid airship platform, rooted in Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-funded research. The SDR Group drew federal attention and engagement from the U.S. Department of Commerce, DARPA and U.S. Geological Survey, as well as significant investment from allied international partners including the UAE.

SDR Group had also engaged government and industry stakeholders to make Puerto Rico one of the manufacturing and integration hubs for the program. Additional technology, manufacturing and data analysis jobs were expected across multiple U.S. states, potentially numbering in the thousands.

The complaint names Lockheed Martin Corporation; AT (Squared) Aerospace Inc. (d/b/a AT2 Aerospace); Straightline Aviation Limited; Knight Aerospace, LLC; Niagara Gravity Consulting LLC; and individual defendants identified in the filing.

Claims are brought under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016, the Virginia Uniform Trade Secrets Act, and applicable Puerto Rico and New York law, including breach of confidentiality agreements, breach of fiduciary duty, fraudulent inducement, tortious interference, and unjust enrichment.

Plaintiffs seek a permanent injunction to halt further use or disclosure of SDR Group's trade secrets, return or certified destruction of all protected materials, and substantial monetary damages for the loss of the UAE transaction, disruption of their global commercialization strategy, and the non-recoverable costs of multi-year integration efforts.

Napoli Shkolnik attorneys are among the most skilled and dedicated legal professionals in the nation. The team includes seasoned litigators and trial lawyers across a wide range of practice areas, including mass tort litigation, governmental affairs, complex commercial litigation, personal injury & medical malpractice, environmental law, and civil rights.

The full press release is available here.