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The top 5 defense contractors received 23% of the entire DoD budget in FY2024. Here's who got the money, what they build, and what it means.
Top 5 vs the full DoD budget
Who builds what
Lockheed Martin
The largest defense contractor on the planet — by a wide margin.
Lockheed receives more DoD money annually than the entire GDP of Bolivia. The F-35 alone has generated over $75B in contracts since 2001 and is expected to fly until 2070. Service members who maintain, fuel, or arm these aircraft are working directly with Lockheed-sustained systems every day.
GAO has flagged the F-35 program for cost growth and missed performance targets across 19 consecutive annual reports. The program cost $38B more than its original estimate — that's more than the entire annual defense budget of Australia.
Raytheon Technologies (RTX)
Missiles, engines, and electronic warfare — the invisible layer of modern combat.
RTX supplies the munitions and engines that define the modern Air Force and Navy. If you fly, launch, or shoot anything in the U.S. military, there's a high probability Raytheon or Pratt & Whitney made a core component of it.
The Stinger restart exposed a critical problem: the U.S. had allowed production to lapse for years. When demand spiked in 2022, the industrial base had to rebuild from scratch — at 3x the original unit cost. Same issue exists across multiple munition lines.
Boeing Defense, Space & Security
Attack helicopters, tankers, and the planes most Army aviators fly.
Boeing's defense division depends heavily on legacy programs from the 1970s–90s — the Apache, Chinook, and F-15 are all upgraded versions of Cold War designs. The commercial aviation arm's problems have not directly affected defense production, but they share a leadership structure and balance sheet.
The KC-46 tanker has logged over $7 billion in cost overruns that Boeing has absorbed directly. The Remote Vision System — which allows boom operators to see during refueling — took years past deadline to meet military specs and was rejected multiple times.
General Dynamics
The company that builds the Army's tanks and the Navy's submarines.
Every soldier in a tank and every submariner on a nuclear boat is operating equipment built by General Dynamics. The Virginia-class program is the single biggest constraint on U.S. undersea warfare capacity — the shipyards can only produce 1.2 boats per year against a Navy requirement of 2.0.
The Columbia-class submarine is running years behind schedule and billions over budget at the shipyard level. The program is deemed so critical that it has statutory priority over almost all other Navy shipbuilding — meaning it crowds out maintenance and construction of surface ships.
Northrop Grumman
Stealth bombers, missile defense, and programs too classified to name.
Northrop is the closest thing the defense industry has to a classified-work specialist. A substantial portion of their revenue comes from programs that are not publicly named in contract announcements. The B-21 is expected to replace both the B-2 and eventually the B-52 — it will be the backbone of U.S. nuclear deterrence for the next 50 years.
The B-21 program is operating at a "cost-plus" contract structure that critics argue removed financial incentive for Northrop to control costs. The Air Force has classified the per-unit cost; independent estimates range from $692M to $800M+ per aircraft for the first 100 units.
What concentration means
The defense industrial base has consolidated by ~50% since the Cold War
In 1993, the DoD had approximately 51 major prime contractors. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin hosted the "Last Supper" dinner that year, telling industry leaders that consolidation was coming. Today there are roughly 5. The Pentagon simultaneously encouraged and created this consolidation — then spent the next 30 years managing its consequences. When a sole-source supplier misses a schedule or fails a product, there is no backup.
The revolving door is structural
The Pentagon employs roughly 50,000 contracting officers and program managers. A substantial share leave for positions at defense contractors — legally, after a mandatory waiting period. Contractors employ former DoD officials specifically for their institutional knowledge of acquisition processes, relationships with program offices, and ability to navigate the bureaucracy. This is legal, disclosed, and uncontroversial in Washington. It is also the structural reason that program costs reliably exceed estimates.
Cost-plus vs fixed-price: who bears the risk
Many major defense programs are structured as "cost-plus" contracts — the government reimburses the contractor for costs incurred, plus a fee. This removes the financial incentive for the contractor to control costs. Fixed-price contracts transfer cost risk to industry, but contractors respond by inflating initial bids to cover uncertainty. The B-21 program's cost structure is largely classified. The F-35's is not: it started as fixed-price development and ended up as a complex hybrid after Lockheed absorbed early losses.
Contract obligation figures from USASpending.gov FY2024 data, cross-referenced with the DoD Comptroller contract award database and Congressional Research Service “Defense Acquisitions: How and Where DoD Spends Its Contracting Dollars” (annual). Program cost data from Government Accountability Office Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs). Revolving door analysis from Project On Government Oversight (POGO) “Brass Parachute” report (2023). All figures approximate; official data available at usaspending.gov.