The U.S. defense industry has been supporting the brave men and women of our armed forces for over 240 years! For a look at the historical development of U.S. arms production, please see our blog post here. In this article, we provide a high-level overview of the defense industry today, including its key market segments, top OEMs, and overall performance in the marketplace.
According to the GAO, the U.S. defense industrial base contains over 200,000 different companies. This diverse industry includes everything from massive global aerospace manufacturers, to 3D printing startups, to boutique shops manufacturing small-run equipment for special forces applications.
Note that in many cases, economic statistics treat the defense industry and aerospace industry as a combined sector. Many defense OEMs also offer solutions for civilian aviation, and global manufacturers like Boeing maintain both civilian- and defense-facing businesses (in Boeing’s case, the former McDonnell Douglass). In fact, the post-COVID slowdown in civilian aviation led to two largely military OEMs, Lockheed and Raytheon, taking the lead as the largest aerospace/defense companies in the world by revenue for the first time in 2022 (taking over top spots long held by Boeing and Airbus). See our overview of the aerospace industry here. Based on 2022 revenues from defense only, the top 10 defense companies by revenue are:
The total U.S. defense and aerospace market generates revenues of over $600 billion annually while supporting over 800,000 direct jobs and 1.6 million supply chain jobs. Reporting from Forbes notes that defense jobs are a critical foundation for the economy of many U.S. states. For example, defense contracts in some years generate nearly 5% of overall GDP in geographies ranging from Alabama to Connecticut.
While PwC notes that the performance of specific programs lead to a dip in defense profits, the coming decade appears set to support a historic boom in defense-related spending—we explain why in our post on defense industry trends here. A number of defense contractors have billions of dollars in order backlogs, and substantial investment may be required to keep up with demand. PwC’s annual report highlights a few large procurement plans that illustrate several major funding sources for defense contractors in the coming years:
While these high-budget, large weapons systems may generate the biggest headlines, the United States’ tens of thousands of defense OEMs support a huge variety of projects including everything from electronics and cyber security solutions, to logistics support systems, to battlefield cloud computing.
The thousands of OEMs that comprise the broader defense sector may be categorized as follows:
The TriStar team is proud to play our part supporting the defense industry. We have extensive experience working with defense OEMs to help engineer components for the equipment that helps servicemembers stay safe as they work to protect our country.
For a deeper dive into the biggest challenges for defense industry components (and how TriStar’s high-performance polymers can help solve them) please see our guide here.