The House subcommittee that writes the Pentagon’s annual spending bill recently released its fiscal year 2019 version. The accompanying press release trumpets all the money devoted to the Department of Defense: more than $606 billion in base budget funding and an additional $68 billion in the off-budget slush fund known as Overseas Contingency Operations.

Among the eye-popping lines is $9.4 billion for the F-35 aircraft. The bill funds 93 of them, 16 more than the Pentagon asked for in the coming year. Not surprisingly, the Lockheed Martin plant where the F-35 is fabricated is in the Fort Worth-based district of the subcommittee chair, Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX).

Follow the money, as the old saying goes.

And that factoid led us to do just that: we took a look at other major procurement programs where Rep. Granger’s subcommittee added money. And of the $4.6 billion the subcommittee added, $3.5 billion is for Lockheed Martin Programs.  Now, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is, obviously, not an aviation program and Lockheed Martin is only one of the three potential contractors for that $950 million. But, you get the drift.

And the money is definitely drifting in the direction of Lockheed Martin.