Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics compared: backlog, margins, dividends and 20 years of returns

Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics are often grouped together as “defense stocks,” but their filings describe four quite different businesses. This comparison uses each company’s 2025 annual report and its second-quarter 2026 10-Q, with prices from the October 2, 2026 close.

Not all of them are pure defense

RTX is the largest by revenue, but less than half of its business is defense. Its 10-K shows 38% of 2025 sales went to the U.S. government, another 8% were foreign military sales through the U.S. government, and 48% came from commercial aviation and other customers — the Pratt & Whitney engines and Collins aerospace parts. Of its $268 billion of backlog at the end of 2025, $161 billion was commercial. General Dynamics, which owns the business-jet maker Gulfstream, got 68% of its revenue from the U.S. government, 15% from U.S. commercial customers, 8% from non-U.S. governments and 9% from non-U.S. commercial customers. Northrop Grumman (84%) and Lockheed Martin (72%, including 63% from the Department of Defense) are the most dependent on Washington.

RTX in its current form also dates only from April 3, 2020, when United Technologies — which then owned the Otis elevator and Carrier air-conditioning businesses — merged with Raytheon and spun off Carrier and Otis. Its financial history before 2020 belongs to a different company.

Order books

Backlog — firm orders not yet delivered — grew at all four. Lockheed Martin’s jumped by $36.8 billion in the first half of 2026, to $230.4 billion, which its 10-Q attributes mainly to a contract for the THAAD missile-defense system. General Dynamics ended 2025 with $118 billion, up from $90.6 billion a year earlier, and reached $136.5 billion by July 2026. Northrop Grumman’s backlog was $95.7 billion at the end of 2025 and $104.7 billion at mid-2026.

The years that need a footnote

Defense profits look steady from far away, but each company has years distorted by one-off charges, all explained in the 10-K of that year:

• Lockheed Martin 2017: a $1.9 billion one-time tax charge from the U.S. tax reform. 2024 and 2025: losses on classified programs and, in 2025, on helicopter programs for Canada and Turkey — $950 million, $570 million and $95 million of operating profit in 2025.
• RTX 2020: $3.24 billion of goodwill and intangible impairments at Collins Aerospace and a loss from continuing operations. 2023: a $2.2 billion after-tax charge for the “powder metal” issue in Pratt & Whitney engines.
• Northrop Grumman 2019: a $1.8 billion pension mark-to-market expense. 2021: a $1.98 billion gain on selling its IT services business. 2023: a $1.56 billion charge on the B-21 bomber program.

Dividends

Counting the largest quarterly payment of each year, General Dynamics has raised its dividend 28 years in a row through 2025 — matching its own 10-K, which called the March 2025 raise “the 28th consecutive annual increase.” By the same count, Lockheed Martin has 23 years and Northrop Grumman 22 (neither states a number in its 10-K). RTX’s count restarted in 2020: its quarterly payment fell from $0.735 under United Technologies to $0.475, because shareholders also began receiving dividends from Carrier and Otis — a spin-off, not a cut.

$1,000 over 5, 10 and 20 years

The answer depends on the window. Over five years, RTX led and the others trailed or matched the index; over ten, none beat the S&P 500; over twenty, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin both did. Some gaps are too small to call: General Dynamics and the S&P 500 over five years differ by about 1%, and Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics over ten years by $2. For RTX and Northrop, the shares received in spin-offs (Carrier and Otis in 2020, Huntington Ingalls in 2011) are treated as reinvested in the parent.

Insiders and big funds

No insider at any of the four bought shares on the open market in the twelve months to early October 2026. Sales without a 10b5-1 plan were $95.2 million at General Dynamics, $41.8 million at RTX, $16.9 million at Northrop Grumman and $13.9 million at Lockheed Martin; Northrop insiders also sold $9.5 million through plans. Most of General Dynamics’ total ($77.2 million) was sold on the same forms that report option exercises — executives exercising options and selling, which the filings do not explain further.

Only seven to nine of the 38 managers this site tracks held each stock at the end of June 2026, and most of them are quantitative or multi-strategy funds. The value investor that appears in three of the four — Lockheed Martin, RTX and General Dynamics — is Tom Gayner of Markel.

See each company’s page for daily data: Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics. Not investment advice.