Assessment · Companies

How much of defense companies' growth since 2021 came from M&A?

Among companies disclosing acquired revenue, about a third of added revenue came from M&A, mostly three deals. The five largest growers disclose no separate acquired-revenue figure.

October 8, 2026

Among the 23 companies on our growth leaderboard with fiscal 2021 revenue, fourteen disclose revenue from businesses they bought between that year and their latest fiscal year. Their figures add up to $8.6 billion, against $24.8 billion of revenue those companies added, net of businesses they sold. That's about a third. Adding back the sales L3Harris and SAIC gave up through divestitures, as their organic growth figures imply, still leaves about a third. Three deals make up $5.0 billion of the $8.6 billion: L3Harris's purchase of Aerojet Rocketdyne, V2X's merger with Vertex and AeroVironment's purchase of BlueHalo.^1–5

Our growth leaderboard tracks 25 companies. They are U.S.-based, U.S.-listed companies with at least $400 million in revenue in their latest fiscal year. Each one's annual report shows that most of its revenue is government work, done directly or through other contractors, and that most of that is defense and intelligence. We add three companies central to defense whose reports don't show that. Boeing is one of the Department of War's largest contractors.⁶ Palantir had $1.9 billion of U.S. government revenue in 2025, and Parsons earns about half its revenue from federal work.^7–8 Amentum and Karman, which listed their shares after 2021, report no fiscal 2021 revenue.^9–10 The other 23 added $111.4 billion in annual revenue from fiscal 2021 to their latest fiscal year.¹¹ That's four or five years, depending on each company's calendar.

Three deals dominate the acquired revenue companies disclose

At L3Harris, V2X and AeroVironment, the companies' own figures equal 62% to 67% of the revenue each added.^12–14 At Booz Allen, CACI and Leidos, which each added more than $3 billion, the figures come to a fifth or less.^15–17 Take Aerojet Rocketdyne, Vertex and BlueHalo out of both totals, and what the fourteen say they bought comes to 18% of what they added.

Amentum's merger with the Critical Mission Solutions business that Jacobs spun off isn't in these totals, because Amentum reports no fiscal 2021 revenue.⁹ Its revenue rose to $14.4 billion in fiscal 2025 from $8.4 billion.¹⁸ Amentum says the increase "was primarily attributable to revenues from the merger with CMS".¹⁹

AeroVironment grew 141% in BlueHalo's first year, then 6% the next quarter

AeroVironment closed its BlueHalo purchase on May 1, 2025, the first day of its 2026 fiscal year.⁵ Revenue rose 141% that year, to $1.98 billion.²⁰ BlueHalo supplied $919 million of the $1.16 billion increase.⁵ In the quarter ended Aug. 1, 2026, the first with BlueHalo in both years, revenue grew 6%.²¹

L3Harris shows the same handoff in its own tables. It counted Aerojet Rocketdyne's revenue as acquired until the first anniversary of the deal: $1.05 billion in 2023 and $1.28 billion in 2024.^{1, 22} Its organic measure leaves out "first year revenue associated with acquisitions," so from the second year on, Aerojet's sales count as organic.²²

The largest revenue gains come with no separate acquired-revenue figure

Boeing, RTX, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman added $79.8 billion, 72% of the total.¹¹ Our deal tracker lists no acquisition by Northrop or RTX that closed after 2021; Northrop's one deal since is a $50 million minority stake in Firefly Aerospace in 2025.²³ RTX's annual reports give acquisitions and divestitures as one net figure, which took $3.3 billion off its sales from 2022 through 2025.²⁴ Over the same years, RTX says organic growth added $27.7 billion, more than the $24.2 billion its sales rose.^25–27

Boeing bought Spirit AeroSystems on Dec. 8, 2025, and says Spirit's results through the end of that month "were not material".²⁸ Eight of the 25 state neither an organic growth rate nor an acquired-revenue figure for any year after fiscal 2021, among them Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Boeing.

Acquired revenue usually becomes organic after the first year

Each company sets its own rules. Curtiss-Wright counts a purchase as incremental "for the first twelve months from the date of acquisition".²⁹ Mercury Systems treats acquired revenue as organic after four full quarters and restates earlier years to match.³⁰ Its fiscal 2022 acquired revenue, first reported as $118 million, appears as $6 million in its next annual report.^31–32 Kratos's 2024 organic rate counts its Sierra Technical Services purchase "as if acquired at the beginning of 2023".³³

CACI and AeroVironment give revenue for the months after each deal closed, in the fiscal year it closed.^34–35 The months before each deal's anniversary that fall in the next year aren't in any dollar figure, so the totals here are the least each company says it bought.

ENTRUST brings the next test at Leidos

Growth at a buyer includes a purchase for about a year, then the purchase becomes part of the base. Leidos closed its ENTRUST Solutions purchase in March 2026, and CACI closed ARKA the same month.^36–37 Leidos reports acquisition revenue on its own line for 12 months from closing, so its fiscal 2026 results will show how much of its growth ENTRUST supplied.³⁸

Every company, fiscal 2021 to its latest fiscal year

Says it bought: the sum of each company's stated revenue from acquired businesses for the years after fiscal 2021. Purchases closed: acquisitions in the TGOs deal tracker with the company as buyer that closed after its fiscal 2021 and by the end of its latest fiscal year.

How we build this data

The set is our growth leaderboard: U.S.-based companies listed on a U.S. exchange with at least $400 million in revenue in their latest fiscal year, whose annual report shows that most of its revenue is government work, done directly or through other contractors, and that most of that work is defense and intelligence, plus three companies central to defense whose reports don't show that: Boeing, one of the Department of War's largest contractors; Palantir, with $1.9 billion of U.S. government revenue in 2025; and Parsons, which earns about half its revenue from federal work. That is 25 companies. Revenue is each company's annual-report revenue for its fiscal 2021 and its latest fiscal year, the latest figure it filed for each year. Amentum and Karman report no fiscal 2021 revenue and are left out of the totals.

What a company says it bought is the sum of every dollar figure it states, in its annual report or earnings release, for revenue from businesses it acquired, for each fiscal year after 2021. Curtiss-Wright states two of those years in points of sales growth, which we convert at the prior year's sales. Leidos's 2022 figure combines acquisitions with a business it sold, so it is left out. Mercury Systems' figures are as first reported. RTX's annual reports give acquisitions and divestitures as one net figure. Each company defines organic growth and acquired revenue its own way, and most count a purchase as acquired for about its first year.