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All the defense companies keep merging. If you look back 30 years ago at the number and variety of airplanes the US military flew, you'd have a dozen or so comp
by griffinkelly 7y ago
All the defense companies keep merging. If you look back 30 years ago at the number and variety of airplanes the US military flew, you'd have a dozen or so companies, many now top of mind defunct or merged--Grumman, McDonnell Douglas, Fairchild. My dad used to work for Texas Instruments' defense wing, which merged into Raytheon, developed JSOW missiles.
I'm by no means an expert in this, but I think its largely attributed to the contracts going to the lowest bidder, a struggle to compete for them, and move R&D forward simultaneously.
- TaylorAlexander 7y agoI wonder if it’s also a way to cover up shady practices. Shuffle the deck every once in a while so it’s hard to track the records if a political reckoning ever came.
- nradov 7y agoSystems have become tremendously more complex in the past 30 years. It's just no longer feasible for a medium sized company to act as a prime contractor due to lack of breadth and resources.