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General Dynamics
Incoming General Dynamics Chairman & CEO Phebe N. Novakovic today used her first earnings call to promise investors greater discipline and realism. Although the company's finances are strong -- cash on hand is five times greater than debt -- it has repeatedly disappointed investors in recent years
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Date:
1/23/2013
Although the budget walls seem to be closing in on some of its competitors, General Dynamics is enjoying robust demand for its submarine development and production work. Shortly before Christmas, the company's shipbuilding unit received three sizable contracts to perform development work on a replacement
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Date:
1/8/2013
There's been a lot of buzz lately about how women are moving up in the defense business, but the biggest leap has gotten the least attention. On January 1, Phebe Novakovic will take over as CEO and Chairman of General Dynamics, the Pentagon's number-three supplier and the builder of Gulfstream
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Date:
11/26/2012
The defense industry has become the backbone of what's left of manufacturing in the Northeast. But don't take my word for it, just look out the window of your car as you drive from D.C. to Cape Cod. From the sprawling Northrop Grumman electronics plant near Baltimore to the Boeing helicopter factory
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Date:
8/15/2012
Well, you learn something everyday. While reading Tracks, the in-house newspaper of the Anniston Army Depot, I discovered the highly regarded Stryker combat vehicle that has figured so prominently in the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns is named after two Medal of Honor winners. I always
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Date:
8/3/2012
The U.S. defense industry used to be regarded as a bastion of white male executives. It still is seen that way in some quarters, but the reality is that women are rapidly ascending into top jobs across the defense sector. Since the new year began, General Dynamics has announced its next Chairman
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Date:
7/30/2012
The lead vessel in the Littoral Combat Ship program has reached the point in its development when self-appointed watchdogs begin to question its price and performance. The Project on Government Oversight has branded it a "busted, leaky boat" and called for cancellation of the whole class. Investigative
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Date:
5/14/2012
With demand for weapons headed downward in the Obama Administration's proposed five-year spending plan, now would seem like a good time for defense companies to consider diversifying into commercial work. Many of them have technology skills that seem fungible beyond defense, and the outlook for
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Date:
3/12/2012
Yesterday I did an investor call with Michael Lewis of Lazard Capital Markets concerning the outlook for the defense sector as military spending priorities shift. You can read Lazard's full report on my comments
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Date:
3/2/2012
Pentagon policymakers were smart to wait two weeks before disclosing the program changes that will accompany the administration's new national security strategy. The political system needs some time to assimilate the emerging strategic framework before it hears what revised military priorities
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Date:
1/6/2012
For nearly a decade now, diversification has been the "D" word in the defense industry -- the strategy that dare not speak its name. But conditions have deteriorated so badly in military markets that companies are contemplating expansion into adjacent areas, and even further afield. It's not just
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Date:
11/8/2011
The process of defense industry restructuring which began with ITT’s spinoff of its defense electronics group is picking up speed. Yesterday, General Dynamics announced that it was acquiring armored vehicle maker Force Protection. The GD move expands its portfolio by adding FP’s large installed
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Date:
11/8/2011
Despite softening military demand and politically-driven delays in contract awards, defense-industry bellweather General Dynamics outperformed its peers and market expectations in the third quarter. The company's earnings results released this morning indicate that Chairman Jay Johnson managed
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Date:
10/26/2011
Army leaders suddenly realized last summer that their planned replacement for the Humvee was in danger of being killed by Congress. The Government Accountability Office was estimating each of the so-called Joint Light Tactical Vehicles might cost $350,000, and that's not even counting on-board
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Date:
10/24/2011
When Northrop Grumman Chairman Wes Bush addressed a meeting of government officials and contractors at the company's new headquarters in Virginia last week, he began by thanking local officials for their help in moving to the location. Bush disclosed the decision to move the headquarters from Los
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Date:
10/11/2011
The U.S. Army has remarkably little to show for the hundreds of billions of dollars it has spent on modernization since 9-11. Its helicopter fleet is in reasonably good shape because the service decided to keep buying systems like the Apache, Black Hawk and Chinook that had already proven themselves,
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Date:
9/28/2011
Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter has approved two high-tech military radios for production that will thoroughly revolutionize the way in which U.S. soldiers and other warfighters operate on future battlefields. The radios are compact, "software-reconfigurable" communications devices developed
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Date:
6/22/2011
With Osama bin Laden now gone to his reward -- probably not the place where 72 virgins await him -- defense contractors must confront the possibility of a major downturn in military demand over the coming years. The Obama Administration has already canceled four of the top twelve weapons programs
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Date:
5/3/2011
General Dynamics is the oldest continuously operating military contractor in America, tracing its origins to the Electric Boat Company that supplied the Navy's first submarine in 1900. Lately, though, the company has been living up to its name as an innovator that sets the standard for performance
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Date:
3/15/2011
The big story for the defense industry in the January 6 budget cuts proposed by defense secretary Robert Gates was what didn't happen: after reducing future weapons outlays by $330 billion in previous rounds of budget cutting, this time Gates cut almost nothing. The headline story was termination
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Date:
1/7/2011
The Sydney Morning Herald reports today that the chief executive officer of Australian shipbuilder Austal is resigning after only two years on the job. Nobody outside the company seems to know why he is leaving. Normally, few people in Washington would care why the CEO of a modest ($500
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Date:
9/22/2010
On July 31 the USS Missouri, seventh vessel in the Virginia class of nuclear-powered attack submarines, was commissioned at the naval submarine base in Connecticut. A crowd of 3,000 people attended the ceremony, including defense secretary Robert Gates and his wife Becky, House Armed Services Committee
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Date:
8/5/2010
General Dynamics is arguably the most investor-conscious company in the defense business. Under the leadership of industry legend Nicholas Chabraja, GD remade itself from a run-of-the-mill military contractor into a consistent earnings performer deploying capital across a diverse portfolio of businesses.
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Date:
8/3/2010
Nuclear-powered warships are uniquely suited to America's global maritime role, because they have unlimited range and are less dependent on overseas logistics support than warships powered by fossil fuels. However, the special skills required to design and build such vessels are concentrated in
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Date:
7/22/2010
You don't need a defense expert to tell you that domestic demand for military goods and services is likely to weaken in the years ahead. The war in Iraq is ending, the federal government is running a daily budget deficit of $4 billion, and the Obama Administration has an ambitious domestic agenda.
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Date:
5/14/2010
Sometime this summer an anonymous panel of Navy weapons experts will decide the economic future of a struggling town in rural northeastern Wisconsin. Marinette, Wisconsin is the home of the shipyard building the Lockheed Martin version of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), a multi-mission warship
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Date:
4/15/2010
Seventeen years ago, I found myself riding the Washington Beltway through Tyson's Corner with one very happy defense executive. He was the chief financial officer of General Dynamics, and he had just sold his company's fighter plant in Fort Worth to Lockheed for over a billion dollars. Everybody
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Date:
3/1/2010