Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC)

Northrop Grumman is an aerospace and defence technology company selling to United States and international customers, principally to the U.S. Department of War and the intelligence community. Sales to the U.S. government were 84 percent of the total in 2025, 87 percent in 2024 and 86 percent in 2023. It was formed in 1939 in Hawthorne, California as Northrop Aircraft Incorporated and reincorporated in Delaware in 1985, and it developed flying wing technology including the B-2 Spirit stealth aircraft. Much of the rest came by deal: Grumman in 1994, the defence and electronics businesses of Westinghouse in 1996, Litton Industries and Newport News Shipbuilding in 2001, TRW in 2002, and Orbital ATK in 2018, with the shipbuilding business spun off as Huntington Ingalls in 2011 and the IT and mission support services business sold in 2021. There were approximately 95,000 employees at the end of 2025, roughly 7,500 of them hired during the year, and approximately 4,300 are covered by 15 collective agreements. There are four segments.

Aeronautics Systems

Aircraft and uncrewed aircraft. The B-21 Raider long-range strike aircraft is in development and production for the U.S. Air Force. The segment also builds fuselages for the F-35 and the F/A-18 Super Hornet, the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye battle management aircraft for the U.S. Navy, Japan and France, the MQ-4C Triton for maritime surveillance over ocean and coastal regions for the U.S. Navy and Australia, and the RQ-4 Global Hawk high-altitude surveillance aircraft for the U.S. Air Force, Japan and the Republic of Korea. It sustains and supports the F-35, B-2, F/A-18, E-2, E-3, A-10, Alliance Ground Surveillance, Triton and Global Hawk fleets. Approximately 40 percent of the work is done through restricted programmes.

Defense Systems

Strategic deterrent systems, tactical weapons and missile defence for the U.S. military and international customers: strategic missiles, all-domain command and control, precision strike weapons, propulsion including tactical solid rocket motors and hypersonic and air-breathing systems, gun systems, ammunition, precision munitions and fuzes, and weapons modernisation and sustainment. Named programmes include Sentinel, the intercontinental ballistic missile modernisation that is to become the ground-based leg of the nuclear triad, the Stand-In Attack Weapon air-to-surface missile for the F-35, the scramjet propulsion subsystem for the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile, and solid rocket motors for the Precision Strike Missile and the Standard Missile programmes. The filing states that the Precision Guidance Kit replaces conventional fuzes on artillery and mortar munitions and turns them into GPS-enabled precision guided weapons. Less than 5 percent of this work is restricted.

Mission Systems

The sensors and the electronics inside the platforms: radar, electro-optical, infrared and acoustic sensors, command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems, electronic warfare, communications and network systems, microelectronics, navigation and positioning sensors, maritime power, propulsion and payload launch systems, cyber and intelligence processing. Named programmes include the infrared countermeasure systems that protect large, rotary wing and medium fixed wing aircraft from heat-seeking missiles, and the F-35 fire control radar and Distributed Aperture System. Approximately 30 percent of the work is restricted.

Space Systems

Space, missile defence and launch systems for national security, civil government, commercial and international customers: satellites and spacecraft, subsystems, sensors and payloads, ground systems, missile defence systems and interceptors, and launch vehicles and propulsion. Approximately 45 percent of this work is restricted.

The order book and the two programmes that shape it

Total backlog, which is the same as remaining performance obligations, was $95.7 billion at the end of 2025 against $91.5 billion a year earlier. The B-21 contract, awarded in 2015, holds a largely cost-type development phase and five largely fixed-price low-rate initial production options for a baseline of 21 aircraft, with not-to-exceed prices agreed for further aircraft up to unit 40 at an average above the first five lots and carrying an inflation adjustment clause. The Sentinel development contract, awarded in 2020 at $13.3 billion, went into a Nunn-McCurdy breach review in January 2024 after cost estimates for the later production and deployment phases rose; those phases are not yet priced. Work on major defence programmes is commonly shared, so the company competes with peers on one contract while supplying or buying from them on another. No material part of the business is seasonal. Access to certain raw materials has been harder and in some cases dearer and slower, which the filing says has not yet affected its ability to perform.

From Northrop Grumman's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025. The filing