All the defense companies keep merging. If you look back 30 years ago at the number and variety of airplanes the US military flew, you'd have a dozen or so companies, many now top of mind defunct or merged--Grumman, McDonnell Douglas, Fairchild. My dad used to work for Texas Instruments' defense wing, which merged into Raytheon, developed JSOW missiles.
I'm by no means an expert in this, but I think its largely attributed to the contracts going to the lowest bidder, a struggle to compete for them, and move R&D forward simultaneously.
Systems have become tremendously more complex in the past 30 years. It's just no longer feasible for a medium sized company to act as a prime contractor due to lack of breadth and resources.
I wonder if it’s also a way to cover up shady practices. Shuffle the deck every once in a while so it’s hard to track the records if a political reckoning ever came.
I'm by no means an expert in this, but I think its largely attributed to the contracts going to the lowest bidder, a struggle to compete for them, and move R&D forward simultaneously.