General Dynamics

• 1. Introduction

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  General Dynamics Corporation is an American industrial and technology company headquartered in Reston, Virginia. In 1900, the United States Navy paid $150,000 for a single submarine built by a company then called Electric Boat. In 2025 dollars, that price is close to $5.75 million. That purchase was the first entry in a long corporate history. General Dynamics is now the third largest of the top 100 contractors to the U.S. federal government. It takes in more than 3 percent of everything the government spends on contractors. The company ranks 96th on the Fortune 100 and 242nd on the Forbes Global 2000.

  How did a single-submarine shipbuilder grow into a conglomerate that builds nuclear submarines, main battle tanks, and Gulfstream business jets under one name? What did the company have to buy, sell, and merge along the way to get there? And what does its present-day business, much of it weapons, cost the world it sells into?

• 2. Born Underwater

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  Isaac Leopold Rice bought the Holland Torpedo Boat Company from its inventor, John Philip Holland, in 1899. Holland stayed on as chief engineer, and the company was renamed the Electric Boat Company. Electric Boat sold modified Holland-class and Plunger-class submarines to Britain's Royal Navy through the English arms manufacturer Vickers, and to Japan and Russia. In 1906 the company won a contract to design C-class submarines, then subcontracted the actual building to the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts.

  When Holland died in 1914, Lawrence Spear took over as chief engineer and redesigned the company's submarine. He replaced the observation dome with a conning tower, added a periscope, and introduced a first-of-its-kind torpedo tube design. In 1911, Electric Boat had already acquired the New London Ship and Engine Company in Groton, Connecticut. It built submarine parts, diesel engines, and commercial ships there. Isaac Rice died in 1915 and was succeeded by his associate Henry Carse. Carse expanded the company by buying Electro Dynamics and the Elco Motor Yacht company. After these acquisitions, the business was renamed the Submarine Boat Corporation.

  During the First World War, the U.S. Navy ordered the company to build 85 submarines, 722 submarine chasers, and 118 surface ships. That wartime surge would not outlast the war itself.

• 3. A Cold War Conglomerate

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  Lawrence Spear retired as chief engineer in 1937 and was replaced by John Jay Hopkins. Hopkins steered the company through the shipbuilding boom of the Second World War. Electric Boat and its Elco Yacht and Electro Dynamic subsidiaries mobilized to full production during the war. A labor shortage followed, and women filled the open jobs as welders and riveters. By the time the war ended in 1945, the company had built 74 submarines and 398 PT boats. The Navy then cut its orders, and the workforce fell from 13,000 to 4,000.

  Hopkins responded to that postwar contraction by buying the Canadian government-owned Canadair for $10 million in 1946. By the Canadian government's own calculation, the factory alone was worth more than $22 million, not counting existing aircraft and spare parts contracts. Canadair's production lines and inventory systems were in disorder at the time of the sale. Hopkins hired the Canadian-born production specialist H. Oliver West to run the company and return it to profitability. Canadair soon began delivering its new North Star aircraft, a version of the Douglas DC-4. It reached Trans-Canada Airlines, Canadian Pacific Airlines, and British Overseas Airways Corporation well ahead of the contracted delivery times.

  Rising Cold War defense spending gave Canadair a run of Royal Canadian Air Force contracts and turned it into a major aerospace maker. The company built the Canadair CT-133 Silver Star trainer, the Argus long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft, and the F-86 Sabre. Between 1950 and 1958, Canadair built 1,815 Sabres. It also produced 200 CF-104 Starfighters, a license-built version of the Lockheed F-104.

  In 1951, the company won the contract to build the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, which launched in 1954. Hopkins argued that aircraft work had grown too important for the name Electric Boat to still make sense. In 1952 he created the General Dynamics Corporation as a new parent holding both Electric Boat and Canadair. The following year, Electric Boat purchased Convair from the Atlas Group. The deal required Convair to keep operating out of Air Force Plant 4 in Fort Worth, Texas. That factory had been built during the war to produce B-24 Liberator bombers. The merger became official on the 29th of April 1954, and the combined company took the name General Dynamics.

  Convair operated as its own division inside General Dynamics. Over the following decade it developed the F-106 Delta Dart interceptor, the B-58 Hustler bomber, and the Convair 880 and 990 airliners. It also developed the Atlas missile, the country's first operational intercontinental ballistic missile. Hopkins was a strong advocate for nuclear power, and Convair led the Pentagon-backed effort to build a nuclear-powered aircraft, nicknamed the N-bomber. The N-bomber was eventually judged impractical and the project was abandoned.

  In the late 1950s, General Dynamics hired the graphic designer Erik Nitsche to create its corporate reports and advertising. His work included the Atoms for Peace poster series for the 1955 International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva, Switzerland. Those posters are now considered examples of mid-century modernist graphic design. Hopkins fell seriously ill in 1957 and was replaced by Frank Pace. That same year, General Dynamics purchased the Liquid Carbonic Corporation and ran it as a wholly owned subsidiary.

  In 1959, the Navy commissioned Electric Boat to design and build the USS George Washington, the first fleet ballistic-missile submarine, derived from the Skipjack-class design. That same year, the Chicago industrialist Henry Crown became the company's largest shareholder after merging his Material Service Corporation into General Dynamics. The next decade would test whether a company now split between ships, planes, and missiles could hold together as one business.

• 4. Jets And Armor

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  Defense secretary Robert McNamara launched the Tactical Fighter Experimental program in 1961. It sought one aircraft design serviceable by the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. General Dynamics and Boeing both submitted proposals. McNamara picked the General Dynamics design for its greater commonality between versions. Boeing's aircraft, by contrast, shared less than half of its major structural components across variants. The resulting F-111 introduced variable-sweep wings, afterburning turbofan engines, and automated terrain-following radar for low-level, high-speed flight. General Dynamics built 563 F-111s at the former Convair plant in Fort Worth, Texas.

  Roger Lewis became chairman and chief executive in 1962. The company bought the Quincy Shipbuilding Works from Bethlehem Steel in 1963 and reorganized into 12 operating divisions by 1965. Electric Boat launched the USS Sturgeon, lead ship of the Sturgeon-class attack submarines, in 1967. In 1970 the board replaced Lewis with David S. Lewis, formerly president of McDonnell Douglas, and the company moved its headquarters to St. Louis, Missouri, the following year.

  Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding won contracts in 1971 to co-manufacture the Los Angeles-class submarines. Electric Boat received the design contract for the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine in 1972. It also developed a new modular construction process for the 560-foot hulls, a process still used across the industry today. Construction of the lead Los Angeles-class attack submarine began that same year. In 1973, General Dynamics opened the Quonset Point Facility in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, to support the Groton shipyard, with production starting the following year.

  The Air Force's Lightweight Fighter program sought a design built around Major John Boyd's energy-maneuverability theory. General Dynamics set up its own version of Lockheed's Skunk Works, called the Advanced Concepts Laboratory, and submitted the YF-16 design in 1972. The YF-16 first flew in January 1974 and outperformed the rival Northrop YF-17 in head-to-head testing. It entered production as the F-16 Fighting Falcon in January 1975, with an initial order covering 650 and then 1,388 aircraft. Export contracts followed as the F-16 beat the F-17 in competitions abroad. Total orders eventually passed 4,600 aircraft, making the F-16 the company's largest aircraft program.

  In 1975, General Dynamics Electric Boat broke ground on a land-level submarine construction facility in Groton, Connecticut. The new building method changed how the company assembled hulls going forward.

• 5. Buying And Selling

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  General Dynamics sold the struggling Canadair back to the Canadian government for $38 million in 1976. By 1984 the company had narrowed to four divisions: Convair in San Diego, General Dynamics-Fort Worth, General Dynamics-Pomona, and General Dynamics-Electronics. A 1985 reorganization split off the Space Systems Division from Convair's space unit, and that same year General Dynamics acquired the light-aircraft maker Cessna. In 1986 the Pomona division split into a separate Valley Systems Division. Pomona had built the Standard Missile and the Phalanx close-in weapon system. Valley Systems made the Stinger surface-to-air missile and the Rolling Airframe Missile. The two units recombined in 1992, and the General Dynamics Quincy Shipbuilding Division closed in 1986.

  Henry Crown, still the company's largest shareholder, died on the 15th of August 1990. Under chief executive William Anders, General Dynamics then rapidly divested its underperforming divisions. Cessna went back to Textron in January 1992. The San Diego and Pomona missile units sold to General Motors-Hughes Aerospace in May 1992. The Fort Worth aircraft business sold to Lockheed in March 1993. A nearby electronics facility went separately to the Israeli company Elbit Systems, marking Elbit's entry into the U.S. market. The Space Systems Division sold to Martin Marietta in 1994, and the remaining Convair Aircraft Structure unit sold to McDonnell Douglas that same year. What remained of the Convair Division closed in 1996.

  On the land side, General Dynamics bought Chrysler's defense divisions in 1982 and renamed them General Dynamics Land Systems. It added General Motors' defense divisions in 2003, becoming a major supplier of armored vehicles including the M1 Abrams, the LAV 25, and the Stryker. General Dynamics Land Systems acquired Force Protection, Inc. in November 2011 for $350 million.

  Not every UK bid succeeded. In 2004, General Dynamics offered £309 million for the British armored-vehicle maker Alvis plc. BAE Systems outbid it at the last minute, paying £355 million to close the deal that June. The company's next major purchase came in 2018. It paid $9.7 billion for the information-technology firm CSRA and merged it into its General Dynamics Information Technology business.

• 6. Four Businesses, One Company

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  General Dynamics organizes itself into four divisions. Gulfstream Aerospace made up 23 percent of the company's 2024 revenue. It builds the Gulfstream G650, G700, and G800 business jets and offers aircraft services through Jet Aviation. The Marine Systems division, 30 percent of 2024 revenue, designs and builds nuclear submarines and includes Bath Iron Works, Electric Boat, and NASSCO. In September 2018 the U.S. Navy awarded contracts for 10 new Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to General Dynamics Bath Iron Works and Huntington Ingalls Industries.

  Combat Systems made up 19 percent of 2024 revenue and includes General Dynamics Land Systems, General Dynamics European Land Systems, Steyr-Daimler-Puch, and Santa Bárbara Sistemas. Together these units build the Phalanx close-in weapon system and the M1 Abrams main battle tank. They also produce the Stryker and LAV III armored vehicles, the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, and the M104 Wolverine. Their catalog includes the XM2001 Crusader self-propelled howitzer and the GAU-17 and GAU-19 machine guns. It extends to the ASCOD, the Pandur II, the Leopard 2E, the Scout SV, and the Mowag Duro, Eagle, and Piranha vehicle families. On the 26th of December 2020, General Dynamics Land Systems was awarded a $4.6 billion U.S. Army contract for M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams tanks.

  The Technologies division brought in 28 percent of 2024 revenue through General Dynamics Mission Systems. It provides consulting, mission support, mobile communications, computers, and command, control, and cyber services. It also handles intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance work. It is currently modernizing information-technology systems for the U.S. Central Command and for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In September 2020 the division announced a counter-drone partnership giving General Dynamics access to Dedrone's drone detection and defeat technology.

  Across all four divisions, 69 percent of the company's 2024 revenue came from the U.S. federal government. Fourteen percent came from U.S. commercial customers, 10 percent from non-U.S. governments, and 7 percent from non-U.S. commercial buyers. Almost three-quarters of everything the company earns still traces back to a single customer: the U.S. government.

• 7. Behind The Balance Sheet

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  Phebe Novakovic serves as General Dynamics's chairman and chief executive officer. As of December 2022, the board included lead director James Crown alongside directors Rudy de Leon, Cecil D. Haney, Mark M. Malcolm, Jim Mattis, C. Howard Nye, Robert K. Steel, Catherine B. Reynolds, Laura J. Schumacher, John G. Stratton, and Peter A. Wall. Haney chaired the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, and Nye chaired the Audit Committee. Steel chaired the Sustainability Committee, Reynolds chaired the Finance and Benefit Plans Committee, and Schumacher chaired the Compensation Committee. Mattis rejoined the board in August 2019, having served on it once before, then resigned and divested his holdings to become U.S. Secretary of Defense.

  General Dynamics reported $39,407 million in revenue for 2022, with net income of $3,390 million and $51,585 million in assets, employing 106,500 people. That was a large jump from 2005, when the company reported $20,975 million in revenue and 72,200 employees. In December 2020, the board approved a regular quarterly dividend of $1.10 per share, payable on the 5th of February 2021.

  In 2021, the company's U.S. workforce was 21 percent veterans, 23 percent women, and 27 percent people of color. That year it received the U.S. Department of Labor's 2021 HIRE Vets Gold Award. About 20 percent of employees belonged to unions such as the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and the United Auto Workers. The company also directed 70 percent of its community giving to education and social services that year. Another 18 percent went to arts and culture, and 12 percent to service member support. Those figures describe a company at peace with itself. Its weapons contracts abroad tell a more contested story.

• 8. Weapons And Consequences

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  On the 19th of August 2008, General Dynamics agreed to pay $4 million to settle a U.S. government lawsuit. The suit accused one of its units of fraudulently billing for defectively manufactured aircraft and submarine parts. The government said the company manufactured or failed to properly test those parts between September 2001 and August 2003. Some of the parts were for the C-141 Starlifter transport plane. The unit involved, based in Glen Cove, New York, closed in 2004.

  In 2014, Canada selected a General Dynamics Land Systems subsidiary in London, Ontario. It would build Light Armoured Vehicles for Saudi Arabia under a $10 billion deal. Political opponents criticized the sale over Saudi Arabia's role in the intervention in Yemen. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested in December 2018 that Canada might cancel the deal. The company warned that doing so could trigger billions of dollars in liability and cost thousands of jobs. Trudeau said Canada, as a country governed by the rule of law, had to respect its contracts. On the 30th of January 2019, chief executive Phebe Novakovic told investors the dispute had significantly hurt cash flow. Saudi Arabia was nearly $2 billion behind on its payments at the time.

  Advocacy groups including Code Pink and Green America have accused General Dynamics of profiting from migrant children held in U.S. detention camps. They point to its information-technology contracts with the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement. That office runs shelters for unaccompanied children, including some separated from their families under the Trump administration's family separation policy. The company says it plays no role in building or running detention centers. It adds that its training and technical-services contracts began in 2000 and have spanned four presidential administrations.

  Norway's KLP pension fund divested from General Dynamics in November 2021. It cited the company's production of depleted uranium munitions and its Mission Systems unit's work supporting strategic nuclear ballistic guidance and weapon control systems.

  According to Reuters, General Dynamics was the primary contractor on a U.S. military propaganda campaign that spread disinformation about China's Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine. The campaign used fake social media accounts to claim the vaccine contained pork-derived ingredients, making it haram under Islamic law. It ran from the spring of 2020 to mid-2021, targeting people in the Philippines with a Tagalog hashtag meaning China is the virus. An unnamed source told Reuters that a military audit later found the tradecraft sloppy and the effort to hide the fake accounts' origins inadequate. In 2024, General Dynamics IT was awarded a separate $493 million Pentagon contract.

  General Dynamics's arms sales to Israel during the Gaza war have drawn protests at company facilities across the country. Those include sites in Pittsfield, Massachusetts; Lincoln, Nebraska; Saco, Maine; New London, Connecticut; Red Lion, Pennsylvania; and Garland, Texas. The company is the only one in the United States that manufactures the metal bodies of the MK-80 series of bombs. That series is the primary weapon type used in Israel's campaign in Gaza. One munition in that series, the MK-84, uses a mixture of TNT and aluminum powder called tritonal to generate intense heat. That heat has vaporized 2,842 civilians in Gaza, leaving little to no remains.