Defense News published its annual review of the top 100 defense companies in the world yesterday, which finds that the military industrial complex—or MICIMATT, the “military-industrial/Congressional/intelligence/media/academia/think tank complex,” as former CIA analyst Ray McGovern calls it—continued to profit in 2020 despite the COVID pandemic. Defense revenues recorded in this year’s Defense News Top 100 list totalled $551 billion, up about 5 percent from $524 billion for fiscal 2019, recorded in last year’s list, according to the review. Of course, the profits were not distributed equally. U.S. firms made up six of the top 10 firms, and 11 of the top 25. The combined revenue of the 50 U.S. firms on the Top 100 comprised roughly 56 percent of the list’s total defense revenue.
Twenty-four firms from Europe (including Turkey and Ukraine, but excluding Russia) made the list, making up 18 percent of the total. The U.K.’s BAE Systems ranked No. 7, one of seven British firms overall. Seven Chinese firms made the list with a combined total of $95.6 billion in defense revenues, about even with all of NATO, excluding the US, which came out to $97 billion.
Lockheed Martin has topped the list for 22 years in a row and in the latest survey accounted for 11 percent of the total revenue of the 100 companies. Its revenue jumped 11 percent from 2019 to 2020. Coming in second was Raytheon Technologies (formed by the merger of the Raytheon Company and United Technologies in 2019) with $42 billion in defense revenue for FY20, followed by Boeing. Northrop Grumman held steady at No. 4 but saw a 10-percent jump in defense revenue from 2019 to 2020.
Not everybody did so well, however. Russia’s two entrants saw steep defense revenue drops between FY19 and FY20. The revenue of Almaz-Antey, maker of Russia’s much feared S-400 air defense system, fell 34 percent, and that of Tactical Missiles Corporation fell 16 percent. No explanation, however, is provided as to the large drops in revenue reported for these companies.
There’s probably no entry on the Defense News list for the academia part of the MICIMATT, but it’s likely doing very well, too. The Pentagon announced yesterday that Johns Hopkins University has been awarded a ten-year, $530 million contract for support of the US Air Force nuclear enterprise, to include the Minuteman III ICBMs. It was also awarded a separate contract for nearly $24 million for support of the Air Force’s ICBM replacement program, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent. “These contracts provide research and development services in support of the two intercontinental ballistic missile systems,” the announcement says.
