Defense News has posted its annual ranking of the top 100 defense contractors. Not surprisingly, you may notice quite a bit of overlap with POGO's Federal Contractor Misconduct Database, even though the FCMD ranks all government contractors.
Lockheed Martin tops the Defense News list for the 14th year in a row with nearly $40 billion in defense revenue. BAE Systems rose to number 2 with a nearly 10 percent gain in defense sales to $32.7 billion, knocking Boeing down to number 3.
The biggest mover was Navistar, which jumped all the way from 89 to 19 with defense sales that increased almost ten-fold in one year to $4 billion. Navistar's Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles and its other brands of heavy-duty trucks were in very high demand last year. Bechtel also made a big jump from 60 to 36.
“With few exceptions,” reports Defense News, “the top 20 defense, aerospace and services contractors posted strong revenue growth based on their 2008 financial results, propelled by record defense spending and operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The top 100 had total combined defense revenues of $386 billion in 2008, an 11 percent increase over 2007.
However, the change in defense priorities expressed by the Obama administration may put an end--at least temporarily--to the defense industry's salad days. The 2010 budget proposes cuts to many major programs, including Lockheed Martin's F-22 fighter jet.
To round out this blog post about defense contractors, here is a 274-page alphabetical list (PDF file) of all entities holding contracts worth more than $25,000 with the Department of Defense in fiscal year 2008. There are approximately 57,000 names on the list, which is compiled each year by the Department of Defense, Office of General Counsel, Standards of Conduct Office (SOCO). For the past few years, SOCO has also put out an annual Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure (MS Word file), a compilation of actual instances of ethics violations committed by federal employees that is used as a training tool for DoD personnel.
-- Neil Gordon
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