Tanner also said U.S. legislative changes would result in a "pension funding holiday" for the company from 2015 to 2017, which would allow the company to double its projected share repurchases to about $2 billion in 2015.

He said the changes would enable the company to take additional "cash deployment actions" in coming years, but the cash freed up would not necessarily be used for mergers and acquisitions. Instead, he said, any larger M&A activity would likely drive Lockheed to tap the debt market, although he said no large deals were planned at the moment.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)