Biggest aerospace companies: the top 17 by aerospace and defense revenue

This list is for suppliers, sellers, analysts and job seekers who need a current ranking of the world's biggest aerospace companies and want to know what each figure includes. It ranks companies by the revenue from aerospace and defense in their latest annual report filed or published by 30 October 2026, and adds Census Bureau counts of the US supply base that sits beneath them.

The 17 largest aerospace companies by revenue

Revenue is as each company's 10-K, 20-F, annual report or results release states it. Euros are converted at $1.1306 and pounds at $1.3192, the Federal Reserve's 2025 averages (G.5A, 5 January 2026). Headquarters are the principal executive office in each filing. Employee counts are as each filing words them.

What the "aerospace" in each row includes:

• Defense counts. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, L3Harris and General Dynamics are ranked on total revenue because almost all of it is aerospace and defense. General Dynamics' $52.6 billion includes $13.1 billion from its Aerospace segment (Gulfstream business jets and Jet Aviation services); the rest is submarines and ships, combat vehicles and government IT. Our list of the largest defense contractors ranks the same companies by Pentagon contract dollars instead.
• Segments only for diversified groups. Honeywell reported $37.4 billion in total, of which Aerospace Technologies was $17.5 billion. Textron's total was $14.8 billion; we left out its $3.2 billion Industrial segment (Kautex fuel systems and specialized vehicles) and its finance arm. Parker-Hannifin's Aerospace Systems segment was 33% of its $21.5 billion.
• GE Aerospace is what remained of General Electric after the separations of GE HealthCare and GE Vernova. It reports two segments, Commercial Engines & Services and Defense & Propulsion Technologies, and files under the legal name General Electric Company.

Three large European groups, BAE Systems, Safran and Thales, aren't ranked: their investor sites refused our automated requests, so we couldn't check their figures. Check their annual reports directly before comparing.

What the ranking shows

Commercial aviation drove 2025. Boeing delivered 600 commercial airplanes in 2025, up from 348 in 2024, when a seven-week strike by about 30,000 machinists (September 13 to November 4, 2024) disrupted production, and its revenue rose 34.5%. Airbus delivered 793 aircraft and grew revenue 6% in euros. GE Aerospace, which makes and services jet engines through its Commercial Engines & Services segment, grew 18%.

Defense grew more slowly. Lockheed Martin's sales rose 5.6% to $75.0 billion and Northrop Grumman's 2% to $42.0 billion. General Dynamics grew 10.1%, helped by Gulfstream.

The supply chain is consolidating. Boeing completed its purchase of Spirit AeroSystems, a supplier on its 737 program, on December 8, 2025, exchanging about $4.7 billion of Boeing shares. TransDigm, Howmet and HEICO make components and spare parts for engines and aircraft, selling to the companies above and to airlines.

The US aerospace supply base

The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns for 2023 counts US establishments with paid employees in aerospace product and parts manufacturing:

CBP counts single locations with paid employees, on a NAICS 2017 basis. Annual payroll across the six codes was $46.3 billion.

The parts makers in 336413 are where most suppliers sell: 744 of the 966 establishments have fewer than 100 employees. California has the most (198), followed by Florida (84), Washington (81), Texas (64) and Kansas (59). Our page on aerospace companies in Dallas looks at one of these clusters in detail.

How we built the list

1. Who counts. Companies whose main business is aerospace and defense, plus the aerospace segments of diversified industrial groups. Airlines, airports and shipbuilders without an aerospace business are left out.
2. What's counted. Revenue as reported for the latest fiscal year. Where a company reports statutory and adjusted figures (Rolls-Royce: £21.2 billion statutory, £20.1 billion underlying), we use the statutory one.
3. Currency. Federal Reserve 2025 annual averages for every converted figure.
4. Checking. Every figure was matched to the income statement or segment note. Many top results for this search are old (one widely linked top 100 dates from 2022) or rank by market value, which puts a private company's latest valuation next to listed companies' share prices. Industry Week and Flight Global publish their own lists with different definitions.
5. What's missing. Private companies that don't publish results, state-owned groups that don't publish comparable figures in English, and the three European groups we couldn't open.

What the list is good for if you sell B2B

Know the tiers. General guidance, not drawn from the filings. Aerospace buys in tiers. The airframers (Boeing, Airbus, Embraer) and defense primes (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics) buy systems from tier-one suppliers (RTX's Collins and Pratt & Whitney, GE Aerospace, Honeywell, Parker), which buy parts and processes from the 966 parts makers and their own suppliers. A seller of machining capacity, inspection software or quality systems usually starts at tier two, where decisions are faster.

Expect certification first. Suppliers to these companies typically need AS9100 quality certification, and defense work adds export control and cybersecurity rules. Supplier quality and procurement teams screen new vendors on those before price.

Use the filings for timing. Deliveries, backlog and production-rate plans in each 10-K tell you who is ramping. Boeing's deliveries rose 72% in a year; its suppliers had to add capacity to match.

Worked example

Illustrative example. Gaugely (gaugely.example) sells inspection and quality software to parts makers for an illustrative $40,000 a year per plant. Its seller sizes the US market from Census data:

• Start: 966 establishments in NAICS 336413.
• Filter: drop the 206 with fewer than 5 employees, leaving 760 plants.
• Fit: assume an illustrative 40% are AS9100-certified machine shops or assemblers with an inspection backlog: about 304 plants.
• Market: 304 x $40,000 = about $12.2 million a year.

The seller starts with Kansas (59 establishments), home to Spirit's Wichita operations, and Washington (81), and targets the quality manager and the plant manager at each. Finding which plants are adding capacity and who runs quality is the slow part; Bebop does it for every account in a list like this.

Next step: if your buyers include the Pentagon side of these companies, read our guide to selling to government.