CEO: Ronald Sugar
Military contracts 2005: $13.5 billion
Campaign contributions in 2004: $1.68 million (defense related)
$1.77 million (total)Northrop Grumman makes B-2 stealth bomber, which costs $2 billion per plane, the F-14 fighter, the unmanned Global Hawk and amphibious assault ships. Its Newport News division is the only designer, builder and refueler of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in the US. Northrop Grummanis also responsible for ALQ-15 jamming device, used to protect jets from enemy radar-guided missiles. As David Steigman, senior defense analyst for the Teal Group, boasts, “Northrop Grumman’s role is supplying the command control communications and the intelligence surveillance systems to find the bad guys and bop them in the head.”

And the company is politically savvy as well, having given $8.5 million in federal campaign contributions from 1990-2002, which has paid off over the years in spades. In December 2003, Northrop Grumman and partner Raytheon won a contract potentially worth more than $10 billion with the Pentagon for a missile defense system. It’s now the third largest “defense” company in the US, after Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

In June of 2003, Northrop Grumman paid $111.2 million to settle a suit alleging their subsidiary, TRW, overcharged the US government space projects in the 1990s. But paying out money is not hard for the company. Northrop Grumman’s subsidiary Logicon, along with Oracle, was suspected of solidifying a purchasing deal with then Governor Gray Davis in exchange for a sizable campaign donation; an executive at Logicon was also investigated by the SEC for aiding and abetting securities fraud in a separate case. And in 1972 Northrop was caught bribing the head of the Saudi air force and a Saudi prince to buy F-5 military aircraft.

Former Northrop Grumman Electronics Systems chief James Roche served as George Bush’s Secretary of the Air Force for two years. Since September 11th, Roche has emphasized the need for more spending on intelligence systems, specifically mentioning Northrop Grumman’s Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS), a control center and a huge radar disc mounted atop a Boeing 707, which serves “as the airborne nerve center for a military air campaign.” At least seven former officials, consultants, or shareholders of Northrop Grumman now hold posts in the Bush administration, ensuring that the company’s interests are not overlooked for lucrative contracts in the “war on terrorism”, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Vice-Presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby, Pentagon Comptroller Dov Zakheim, and Sean O’Keefe, director of NASA.

Northrop Grumman’s subsidiary, Vinnell Corporation, has been catching a lot of flack lately. They landed a $48 million contract with the US occupational authority to train the Iraqi National Army, but have botched the job so badly that the Jordanian Army has recently been brought in to take over the job.

Vinnell Corporation, founded by the late A. S. Vinnell in 1931 to pave roads in Los Angeles, handles a number of large domestic as well as government projects. After working with Chinese Nationalist Chiang Kai-shek to back US anti-communist efforts against Mao Zedong, the company became the major contractor for US military operations in Okinawa, overhauled Air Force planes in Guam in the early 1950s, and sent men and equipment onto the battlefields of the Korean War.

Now based in Fairfax, Virginia, the company has been controlled in the past through a web of interlocking ownership by a partnership that included James A. Baker III and Frank Carlucci, former U.S. secretaries of state and defense under Presidents George Bush senior and Ronald Reagan respectively.

Perhaps the most important military contract Vinnell landed was in 1975 when the Pentagon helped the company win a bid to train the 75,000 strong Saudi Arabian National Guard, a military unit descended from the Bedouin warriors who helped the Saud clan impose control on the peninsula early in last century. This aspect of Vinnell’s activities was highlighted last spring when Saudi insurgents attacked a compound housing Vinnell workers. Currently, Vinnell has a five-year contract with the House of Saud worth $831 million, which is bankrolled by the Saudis but run by the US Army Materiel Command.

Links

• Northrop Grumman
• Campaign to Stop the War Profiteers and End the Corporate Invasion of Iraq