Defense companies all report how much of their revenue comes from the U.S. government, but they don't count the same thing. The biggest difference is foreign military sales (FMS): deals in which a foreign government buys American weapons through the Pentagon. Five of the sixteen defense and aerospace companies we cover, AeroVironment, L3Harris, General Dynamics, Boeing and Textron, include FMS in their U.S. government figure. Three, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and RTX, leave it out.
Only General Dynamics discloses the amount: $1.00B of FMS inside $35.8B of U.S. government revenue. Taking it out lowers the company's share from 68% to 66.1% by our calculation. For the other four companies that include FMS, we can't make the adjustment, so the "adjusted" view shows their reported figure and labels it as unadjusted.
Reported U.S. government share, defense and aerospace companies
As each company defines it. Some include foreign military sales (FMS); some don't.
Show the data as a table
| Company | Reported | Adjusted ex-FMS | FMS treatment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Huntington Ingalls HII | 99.9% | 99.9% | includes FMS; amount not disclosed |
| Mercury Systems MRCY | 97% | 97% | FMS not applicable |
| AeroVironment AVAV | 85% | 85% | includes FMS; amount not disclosed |
| Northrop Grumman NOC | 84% | 84% | already excludes FMS |
| Leonardo DRS DRS | 80% | 80% | FMS not applicable |
| L3Harris LHX | 75% | 75% | includes FMS; amount not disclosed |
| Lockheed Martin LMT | 72% | 72% | already excludes FMS |
| General Dynamics GD | 68% | 66.1% | FMS removed |
| Kratos Defense KTOS | 68% | 68% | FMS not applicable |
| Curtiss-Wright CW | 47% | 47% | includes FMS; amount not disclosed |
| RTX RTX | 38% | 38% | already excludes FMS |
| Moog MOG-A | 38% | 38% | includes FMS; amount not disclosed |
| Boeing BA | 35% | 35% | includes FMS; amount not disclosed |
| Textron TXT | 27% | 27% | includes FMS; amount not disclosed |
| Teledyne TDY | 25.5% | 25.5% | includes FMS; amount not disclosed |
| Oshkosh OSK | 20% | 20% | includes FMS; amount not disclosed |
What foreign military sales are
Foreign military sales (FMS) is a government-to-government program. A foreign country agrees to buy U.S. defense equipment or services, the Department of Defense signs the contract with the U.S. company, and the foreign buyer pays for it. On paper the contractor's customer is the U.S. government. The money, though, comes from abroad and depends on that country's demand, not only on U.S. appropriations. See the glossary.
That is why the treatment matters to an investor. A share that includes FMS mixes two kinds of exposure: to the U.S. budget and to foreign buyers. A share that excludes it is closer to a measure of dependence on U.S. appropriations alone. Neither choice is wrong. Each company picks one, and the 10-K usually says which in a single clause.
How each company treats FMS
| Company | Reported share | FMS in the figure | Includes work via other primes | Excluding FMS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Huntington Ingalls | 99.9% | Not stated | Not stated | Not available |
| Mercury Systems | 97% | Not applicable | Yes | Same as reported |
| AeroVironment | 85% | Included | Yes | Not available |
| Northrop Grumman | 84% | Excluded (counted as international) | Not stated | Same as reported |
| Leonardo DRS | 80% | Not applicable | Yes | Same as reported |
| L3Harris | 75% | Included | Yes | Not available |
| Lockheed Martin | 72% | Excluded (counted as international) | Not stated | Same as reported |
| General Dynamics | 68% | Included | Not stated | 66.1% (calculated) |
| Kratos Defense | 68% | Not applicable | Yes | Same as reported |
| Curtiss-Wright | 47% | Not stated | Yes | Not available |
| RTX | 38% | Excluded (counted as international) | Not stated | Same as reported |
| Moog | 38% | Not stated | Yes | Not available |
| Boeing | 35% | Included | Not stated | Not available |
| Textron | 27% | Included | Not stated | Not available |
| Teledyne | 25.5% | Not stated | Not stated | Not available |
| Oshkosh | 20% | Not stated | Not stated | Not available |
Included, with the amount: General Dynamics
General Dynamics' 10-K says: "In 2025, 68% of our consolidated revenue was from the U.S. government, 15% was from U.S. commercial customers, 8% was from non-U.S. government customers and the remaining 9% was from …" The same filing gives the FMS portion of that revenue, $1.00B. Subtracting it leaves $34.8B of revenue from the U.S. government's own purchases, or 66.1% of total revenue of $52.5B. Both figures are our calculation.
The adjustment is 1.9 percentage points. It does not change General Dynamics' place among the six defense primes we cover.
Included, amount not disclosed: AeroVironment, L3Harris, Boeing and Textron
These companies say in plain words that their figure includes FMS. Boeing's 10-K: "Revenues from the U.S. government (including FMS), primarily recorded at BDS and BGS, represented 35%, 42% and 37% of consolidated revenues for 2025, 2024 and 2023, respectively." Textron's: "… the U.S. Government, including contracts under the U.S. Government-sponsored foreign military sales program, generated approximately 27% of our consolidated revenues in 2025, primarily in our Bell and Textron Systems segments." L3Harris and AeroVironment use similar wording, and both also count sales made through other contractors.
None of these sentences gives an FMS dollar amount, and we have not found a company-wide figure elsewhere in the filings. So we can't remove it. Their reported shares overstate the part of revenue funded by U.S. appropriations, by an amount we can't measure. Their "excluding FMS" figure is shown as not available rather than estimated.
That limits some comparisons and not others. Boeing's 35% includes FMS and RTX's 38% does not, yet Boeing's is already the lower of the two. Taking FMS out could only lower Boeing's figure further, so the order holds on either basis. L3Harris reports 75% and Lockheed Martin 72%. But L3Harris' figure includes FMS and work through other primes, while Lockheed's appears to exclude FMS. On a like-for-like basis the gap could narrow or reverse. The filings don't give us enough to say which.
Excluded: Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and RTX
Northrop Grumman counts FMS as international sales. Its share sentence reads: "Sales to the U.S. government accounted for 84 percent, 87 percent and 86 percent of sales during the years ended December 31, 2025, 2024 and 2023, respectively." RTX reports its U.S. government sales in a table, and the figure excludes FMS. Lockheed Martin's filing appears to treat FMS the same way, and its sentence also isolates the Defense Department: "We derived 72% of our total consolidated sales from the U.S. Government in 2025, including 63% from the Department of War (DoW), also known as the Department of Defense under …" We treat Lockheed's 72% as excluding FMS and will revise the label if the filing says otherwise.
Not stated or not applicable
Huntington Ingalls' figure comes from the "Federal" line of its customer-type table, and the filing does not say how FMS is treated, so we can't adjust it either. For Mercury Systems, Leonardo DRS and Kratos Defense, our review recorded FMS as not applicable to the share figure.
Mercury Systems' 97% has a different problem. It combines several customer groups in one number. The 10-K: "… some cases directly, to the U.S. government, as well as foreign governments, accounted for approximately 97%, 97% and 95% of our total net revenues in fiscal years 2026, 2025 and …" It overstates the company's direct U.S. government share, and there is no FMS adjustment that would fix it.
FMS is not the only difference
A second definition varies too: whether the figure counts work done as a subcontractor to another company that holds the government contract. Mercury Systems, AeroVironment, Leonardo DRS, L3Harris, Kratos Defense, Curtiss-Wright and Moog say theirs does. Most of the others don't say either way. A subcontractor's revenue still depends on federal budgets, but it reaches the company through another contractor, on that contractor's terms and schedule.
Put together, a gap of a few points between two companies' reported shares can say more about definitions than about dependence. Some practical rules for reading the numbers:
- Compare companies with the same FMS treatment first. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and RTX are comparable with each other as reported.
- Treat a share that includes FMS as an upper bound on exposure to U.S. appropriations.
- Use the adjusted figure only where it says "calculated". Elsewhere it is the reported figure, unchanged. Each company's definition is on its page, linked from the rankings.
How we did this
For each company we recorded the sentence or table its U.S. government share comes from and noted how that figure treats FMS: included, excluded, not stated or not applicable. We remove FMS only where the filing gives a dollar amount, and we label the result as calculated: U.S. government revenue minus FMS, divided by total revenue. We do not estimate FMS for companies that don't disclose it. The full method is on the methodology page.