Things worth knowing from the federal-contract record - who really earns the money, and the names it hides behind. Figures are attributed public-company obligations, FY2015-FY2025.
Federal contracting looks like a broad market and behaves like a short list. Of the 1,113 public companies in the data, the top 10 take 66% of the $3.04T in attributed obligations, and the top 25 take 85%. More than a thousand other issuers split what is left. Lockheed Martin alone ($595B) earns more than the bottom ~1,000 combined.
ELECTRIC BOAT CORPORATION - the Groton submarine yard - appears in federal data under its own
name, never its parent's. It is the single biggest recipient a keyword search for the owner would miss:
$104B, all General Dynamics (GD). Right behind it, SIKORSKY AIRCRAFT is
$49B of Lockheed Martin, and SAVANNAH RIVER NUCLEAR SOLUTIONS is $20B of Fluor.
TRICARE - the military's health program - is run by private insurers, recorded under names that never
mention them. HUMANA GOVERNMENT BUSINESS is $72B of Humana (HUM);
HEALTH NET FEDERAL SERVICES is $36B of Centene (CNC). Together that is over
$100B of defense spending that looks nothing like defense.
A few names aren't defense companies with a government segment - the government is the whole business. Measured against a single year of revenue, federal obligations run about 113% for Lockheed Martin, 105% for Huntington Ingalls, 89% for Amentum, 88% for Booz Allen, and 80% for SAIC. Their fortunes are, quite literally, an appropriations line.
TransDigm buys niche aerospace-parts makers and keeps their names - Calspan, AmSafe, Telair, Aerosonic. In the federal record it shows up as 62 separate recipients, not one of which says "TransDigm." It is not alone: Waste Management appears under 61 names, Amentum 48, HEICO 46. Add them up only if you know they belong together.
Sitting among the defense primes is McKesson (MCK) at $115B - the sixth-largest federal earner in the data. The work is pharmaceutical distribution for the VA and the Defense Department, not weapons. Healthcare logistics, it turns out, is one of the single biggest lines in the federal budget - and it is a public company.
Figures are cumulative attributed prime-contract obligations over FY2015-FY2025, from USASpending.gov and SEC EDGAR. "Federal obligations vs. revenue" compares annualized obligations to the latest reported fiscal-year revenue; obligations are multi-year commitments, so the ratio can exceed 100%. Research use only - not investment advice.
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