Northrop Grumman

Northrop Grumman took its current shape through decades of consolidation, most notably the 1994 merger with Grumman and the 2018 purchase of Orbital ATK, and it now organizes around four business sectors that together give it a hand in nearly every domain the Pentagon cares about. Aeronautics builds the B-21 Raider, the next-generation stealth bomber now in flight testing and slated to eventually replace the B-1 and B-2, plus the MQ-4C Triton high-altitude maritime surveillance drone and the E-2D Hawkeye carrier-based early warning aircraft, and it maintains a long legacy line supporting the B-2 fleet it originally built. Space Systems runs an unusually wide range of work, from the LGM-35 Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile now replacing the aging Minuteman III as one leg of the US nuclear triad, to the Cygnus cargo spacecraft that resupplies the International Space Station, to national security satellites, missile-warning payloads, and the structural backbone behind the James Webb Space Telescope.

Mission Systems supplies the radar and sensor systems inside the F-35 and F-16, sonar and undersea sensors for submarines, and the Integrated Battle Command System that the Army is fielding to network its air and missile defense radars and interceptors into a single picture. Defense Systems, built substantially around the former Orbital ATK business, covers ammunition and precision munitions, the Bushmaster family of chain guns used on Army and Marine Corps vehicles, and solid rocket motors that supply not just Northrop's own missile programs but competitors' as well, since the company is one of only a handful of suppliers left in that market. Because Sentinel and B-21 both anchor legs of the nuclear triad, Northrop Grumman carries a strategic weight in the defense industrial base that goes beyond its revenue ranking, and both programs have drawn sustained scrutiny over cost growth as they move from development into production.

The company also holds a growing role in NASA's Artemis lunar program, building the HALO habitation module for the Lunar Gateway station that will support astronaut missions to the Moon. Headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, and publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker NOC, Northrop Grumman employs well over 90,000 people and derives the large majority of its revenue from the US government, split fairly evenly across its four sectors rather than concentrated in one flagship line.