Northrop Grumman Aerospace - Definition

The Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC (http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/lcddata.html?ticker=NOC)) is an aerospace and defense conglomerate that is the result of a 1994 merger between Northrop and Grumman. Major components were added later with the acquisition of Logicon, Teledyne Ryan, Litton (Ingalls, Avondale), Newport News, and TRW (sans LucasVarity.) Ronald Sugar is the CEO.

The most well known product of Northrop Grumman is the B-2 Spirit. Thomas Jones was the President and CEO of Northrop during the B-2's development and a good friend of two U.S. Presidents, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Jones and his wife socialized with the Reagans both at the White House and at their own functions. Years earlier, Jones was convicted of giving Nixon's chief fundraiser, attorney Herbert Kalbach, $75,000 in $100 bills for use as "hush money" for the CIA connected burglars who were caught breaking into the Watergate building.

As of 2002, it had 120,000 employees working at hundreds of sites in the US and abroad, and an annual revenue of US$17.2 billion.

Born of the shrinking need for defense spending in the wake of the Cold War, Northrop Grumman has a variety of seemingly-unrelated divisions. However, their business strategy has begun to pay dividends as the company's financial performance has improved considerably, and they have been proposing products with components sourced from the various divisions.

Divisions

• Electronic Systems
• Information Technology
• Mission Systems
• Integrated Systems
• Newport News
• Ship Systems
• Space Technology

External link

• Northrop Grumman web site (http://www.northgrum.com/)