Largest US defense contractors: the top 25 by Pentagon contract dollars in fiscal 2025

This list is for companies that sell to defense contractors (suppliers, subcontractors, software and services firms) and for anyone who needs a current, sourced ranking of the Pentagon's biggest contractors. The ranking uses federal contract records, not estimates of defense revenue: every dollar below is a Department of Defense contract obligation in fiscal 2025 (1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025), from USAspending.gov. Revenue, government share and headcount come from each company's own 10-K.

The 25 largest US defense contractors in fiscal 2025

Obligations are fiscal 2025 contract awards (definitive contracts, delivery orders, purchase orders and blanket purchase agreement calls) by Department of Defense awarding offices, net of deobligations, summed across each company's recipient records. Public companies' locations are their headquarters on file with the SEC; private companies' are the address on their largest recipient record. Revenue is the total on each company's latest 10-K income statement.

Just outside the 25: General Atomics ($1.96 billion, mostly General Atomics Aeronautical Systems in Poway, California), KBR ($1.96 billion) and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory ($1.91 billion).

Two things to keep in mind when reading the table. Obligations are not revenue: an obligation is money committed on a contract in the year, and the company records revenue as it does the work, often over several years. And joint ventures are left as their own recipients, so the Bell Boeing Joint Project Office ($1.34 billion) and the Raytheon/Lockheed Martin Javelin joint venture ($0.93 billion) aren't added to either parent.

How much of each contractor's business is government

Revenue from the US government, as each company's latest 10-K reports it:

The split tells you what kind of company you are selling to. At Booz Allen or SAIC, every buying decision is shaped by federal contract rules and how much of a cost the government will reimburse. At Boeing or RTX, the defense business is one large customer among several, and commercial aviation shapes much of the supply chain.

What the ranking shows

Concentration at the top. Lockheed Martin's $73.9 billion is more than twice the next company. Its 10-K says the F-35 program "represented 27% of our total consolidated sales in 2025". The top five took $170.7 billion, 34.7% of the department's $492.1 billion, and the top 25 took 52%.

Ships are a market of their own. General Dynamics' Electric Boat, based in Groton, Connecticut, received $21.4 billion, more than Boeing's entire DoD total. Add Bath Iron Works ($2.4 billion), Huntington Ingalls ($10.1 billion) and the Navy's nuclear propulsion work at Bechtel Plant Machinery ("Naval Reactors" in the contract record) and Fluor Marine Propulsion ("Naval Nuclear Laboratory"), and the shipyards and naval nuclear contractors on this list come to about $38 billion.

Not every big defense contractor is a defense company. Cencora's AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp received $7.4 billion from the Defense Logistics Agency as a pharmaceutical prime vendor. Humana's government business ($6.5 billion) and TriWest ($3.5 billion) administer TRICARE, the military health plan; TriWest's largest award is the "TRICARE managed care support services contract, 5th generation West region". Atlantic Diving Supply ($5.7 billion) supplies equipment through the Defense Logistics Agency. And because the Army Corps of Engineers is part of the department, disaster cleanup shows up too: ECC Constructors' largest awards were for debris removal after the 2025 California wildfires, and AshBritt's ($1.8 billion, just outside the 25) were for Hurricane Helene.

Private companies are visible. Federal contract records are public, so private contractors that publish no financial statements, such as ADS, TriWest, Sierra Nevada and Bechtel, appear here with exact figures.

Spending peaks at year-end. Of the department's fiscal 2025 contract obligations, 36.3% came in the last quarter (July to September), and September alone brought $92.4 billion, 18.8% of the year. As a rule of thumb, primes place supplier orders in the months after those awards, so outreach in late spring and summer reaches program teams while they're planning.

How we built the list

1. Data. USAspending.gov contract obligations for fiscal 2025, filtered to Department of Defense awarding offices and contract award types. Fiscal 2026 isn't usable yet: the Federal Procurement Data System says DoD contract data "is subject to a 90-day delay".
2. Parents. USAspending lists awards by recipient (each legal entity and registration), and its parent links can be out of date: it lists Sikorsky Aircraft under RTX, although Lockheed Martin's 10-K lists Sikorsky helicopter programs in its Rotary and Mission Systems segment. We assigned the 3,000 largest recipient records (each above $13.5 million) to their current parent by name and checked the relationships in the parents' 10-Ks. Smaller units outside those records are not included, so totals may be slightly understated.
3. What's excluded. Grants and other non-contract awards, other agencies' contracts (NASA, Energy, Homeland Security), and foreign military sales funded by other countries that don't pass through a DoD contract.
4. Company figures. Revenue, government share and employees come from each company's latest 10-K filed by 30 October 2026, read in the filing. BAE Systems plc reports in the UK, and private companies don't publish figures, so those cells are marked.

The government's own FPDS Top 100 Contractors Report and the trade press's annual top 100 lists, which rank by defense revenue, are other places to look. Their figures won't match this table because they measure different things.

Selling to the largest defense contractors

Most companies that "sell to defense" are really selling to these primes: parts, materials, software, engineering services, facilities work. A few points shape every one of those sales.

Sell to the business unit, not the parent. The contract records show where the money lands: Electric Boat, not General Dynamics corporate; Bell Textron and Textron Systems, not Providence. Each unit has its own supply chain team, approved supplier list and small business liaison. Start with the unit that holds the program your product fits.

Check the cybersecurity rule before you pitch. The Defense Department's CMMC program (32 CFR part 170) is now written into contracts through a DFARS rule that took effect on 10 November 2025. In phase 1, solicitations require a Level 1 or Level 2 self-assessment where contractor systems handle federal contract information or controlled unclassified information. Phase 2, which adds third-party Level 2 assessments, begins on 10 November 2026, a year after phase 1. The requirements flow down to subcontractors under 32 CFR 170.23, so a prime's buyer will ask about your status before price.

Match the segment to the offer.

For federal selling more broadly, including how agencies buy and how to register, see our guide to selling to government. To reach the right person inside a unit, use how to find decision makers.

Worked example

Illustrative example. Northbank Precision (northbank.example) is a 60-person machine shop in Connecticut that wants its first defense prime customer. Its sales lead works through the list:

1. Pick the unit. Electric Boat received $21.4 billion in fiscal 2025 and is a short drive away, so it's the first target. Huntington Ingalls is second.
2. Size a realistic first order. A bracket Northbank can make at $250 a unit, 2,000 units a year, is worth $500,000 a year. That's 0.002% of Electric Boat's obligations: a line item, not a program decision. The person who decides is a buyer or commodity manager in supply chain, not a program executive.
3. Clear the gates first. Northbank confirms its CMMC self-assessment is posted before phase 2 starts on 10 November 2026, registers on Electric Boat's supplier portal and asks the small business liaison which commodity teams are adding suppliers.
4. Time the outreach. With 36% of the department's obligations landing in July to September, the lead plans first calls for May and June, ahead of the year-end awards.

At volume, finding the buyer and the current program news for each unit is the slow part; Bebop researches each account in the list and drafts the outreach.

Next step: read how the federal market works end to end in our guide to selling to government.