General Dynamics

General Dynamics Corporation (GD) is an American publicly traded aerospace and defense corporation headquartered in Reston, Virginia. As of 2020, it was the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world by arms sales, and fifth largest in the United States by total sales. The company is a Fortune 100 company, and was ranked in 2022. Formed in 1954 with the merger of submarine manufacturer Electric Boat and aircraft manufacturer Canadair, the corporation today consists of ten subsidiary companies with operations in 45 countries. The company's products include Gulfstream business jets, Virginia- and Columbia-class nuclear-powered submarines, Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, M1 Abrams tanks and Stryker armored fighting vehicles. In 2022, General Dynamics had worldwide sales of $39.4 billion and a workforce of approximately 106,500 full-time employees. The current chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) is Phebe Novakovic. General Dynamics Electric Boat General Dynamics traces its ancestry to John Philip Holland's Holland Torpedo Boat Company. In 1899, Isaac Rice bought the company from Holland and renamed it Electric Boat Company. Electric Boat was responsible for developing the U.S. Navy's first modern submarines, which were purchased by the Navy in 1900. In 1906, Electric Boat subcontracted submarine construction to the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, to build the submarines they had designed and won contracts for. Between 1917 and 1924, the company was named Submarine Boat Corporation. In 1933 Electric Boat acquired ownership of a shipyard in Groton, Connecticut, to build submarines. The first submarine built in Groton to be delivered to the U.S. Navy was USS Cuttlefish in 1934. Electric Boat was cash-flush but lacking in work following World War II, during which it produced 80 submarines for the Navy, with its workforce shrinking from 13,000 to 4,000 by 1946. President and chief executive officer John Jay Hopkins started looking for companies that would fit into Electric Boat's market in hopes of diversifying.