Defense Contractors Join Forces as Pentagon Spending Slows by Doug Cameron and Ben Kesling – Wall Street Journal
A merger that would be the aerospace-and-defense industry’s biggest ever caps two years of deal making in a sector that is reorganizing in anticipation of slower growth in Pentagon spending and new priorities such as space systems and hypersonic missiles.
United Technologies Inc. UTX -3.96% and Raytheon Co. RTN -5.11% would be the third-biggest aerospace-and-defense company by sales after Boeing Co. BA -1.26% and Airbus SE . Those companies along with Lockheed Martin Corp. LMT -2.15% , Northrop Grumman Corp. NOC -3.40% , General Dynamics Corp. GD -2.11% and the U.S. arm of BAE Systems BAESY -0.33% PLC dominate a defense industry in which some 50 companies vied for big contracts 30 years ago.
Cuts to U.S. military spending also contributed to an estimated 17,000 U.S. firms leaving the industry between 2001 and 2015, according to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank…