Northrop Grumman
At first glance, you may think that a company with a strange name like Northrop Grumman may not be entitled to much. However, despite its odd name, Northrop Grumman is the 4th largest defense contractor in the world and is the largest builder of navy vessels.
Northrop Grumman came into existence in 1994 after aircraft manufacturer Northrop purchased Grumman, also an aircraft manufacturer. Northrop Grumman is responsible for making many of the advanced aircraft and vessels that the military uses such as the Nimitz-class nuclear powered aircraft carrier and the B-2 spirit strategic bomber. Northrop Grumman also develops unmanned aircraft and satellite systems as well. Northrop continues to upgrade its products and is expecting to come up with a new Gerald Ford-class aircraft carrier to replace the Nimitz and a new RQ Hawk unmanned aircraft that costs about $35 million in production costs.
Northrop Grumman has constantly been growing in size since its creation. Much of its growth comes in the form of acquisitions of other companies. Some companies that have been acquired by Northrop Grumman include Logican, Teledyne Ryan, and Westinghouse Electronic Systems. Northrop Grumman tried to have a merger with competitor Lockheed Martin in 1998, but the US government did not allow it as the company would have been too powerful.
Northrop Grumman often works with other companies to accomplish projects. For example Northrop Grumman works with Boeing on the design of NASA’s upcoming Orion spacecraft.
Other services Northrop Grumman provides include managing defense radars for foreign countries like the United Kingdom and offering training services for foreign armies like the Iraqi army. Northrop has also aided the War on Drugs by sending planes to spray herbicides on cocaine fields in Columbia and opium fields in Afghanistan.
Although Northrop Grumman has been growing well in the past and has many products and contracts with the military, Northrop Grumman has had a history of firing many of its workers.
Overall, Northrop Grumman’s success as a company comes from being able to assimilate its many acquired companies together and pool their resources together to make better products. Northrop is proud of its heritage and even has a page on its website that shows all the companies it has acquired and what parts of Northrop they now contribute to.
Defense Company Profiler 
My sister works for Northrop Grumman and I never knew exactly what the company did do, I just knew that it was a defense company so reading your blog post was really informative and interesting because I definitely did not know they did all of those things.