April 6, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
By: Jill Aitoro
WASHINGTON — Less than a year after announcing plans to combine into a $121 billion company, Raytheon and United Technologies are officially no more — replaced by the combined entity Raytheon Technologies Corp., which kicked off trading Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.
Listed under the ticker RTX, Raytheon Technologies began selling at $51 a share. With more than 866 million shares outstanding and a market cap of $74.5 billion, that price is bound to shift in the coming days, weeks and months. To put it in perspective, Raytheon closed Thursday at $122.43 a share, and UTC closed at $91.37 a share.
With the merger, UTC shareholders owned 57 percent of Raytheon Technologies, and UTC will control eight of the 15 board seats. Tom Kennedy will serve as executive chairman, Greg Hayes as CEO and Toby O'Brien as chief financial officer.
Planned divestitures will be completed post merger, though United Technologies did complete the spinoff of HVAC, refrigeration, fire and security solutions company Carrier Global Corp., as well as elevator and escalator manufacturer Otis Worldwide Corp. Both are now trading on the S&P 500.
Amid the stock market fallout from the new coronavirus pandemic, Raytheon saw a bigger drop than most pure-play companies, likely due to the increased exposure to the commercial market that came with the merger. However, that could be short-lived, said Byron Callan of Capital Alpha Partners.
“Raytheon has been the worst-performing stock [during the crisis] because they got tied into commercial aerospace through the merger," he told Defense News in an interview. “But going forward, that may be the most interesting [stock] of all because there will be a degree of balance.”
https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2020/04/03/raytheon-technologies-corp-begins-trading-on-nyse/
February 11, 2022 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR, Security
Reports indicate artificial intelligence played a key role in the Israel conflict with Hamas in Gaza in May 2021, and artificial intelligence is increasingly being incorporated into systems developed by Israeli defense companies, such as rifles, bombs and other systems.
June 14, 2019 | International, Aerospace
By: Leo Shane III and Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― House lawmakers advanced a $733 billion defense policy bill on Thursday after nearly 21 hours of sometimes heated debate on the size of the Pentagon budget, the size of the country's nuclear arsenal and a host of other military priorities for next year. The 33-24 final vote by the House Armed Services Committee on the draft of the defense authorization bill marked one of the most divided stances from the committee in years, as Republicans voiced concerns with Democrats' priorities in the measure. The legislation, which sets military spending policy for the upcoming fiscal year, has been adopted by Congress for 58 consecutive years, usually by sizable bipartisan margins. Committee officials insist that's because the needs of the military usually rise above the partisan politics of Capitol Hill. But this year, the narrow passage out of committee illustrated the stark divide in defense policy between the two parties, and hints at a lengthy battle to come as the measure moves across Capitol Hill to the Republican-controlled Senate in the coming weeks. Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., in recent days said he is committed to finding a palatable bill for both Republicans and Democrats. But during the marathon debate he repeatedly defended his party's plans for $733 billion in defense spending for fiscal 2020 as a responsible and sufficient mark. “By a reasonably comfortable margin, this is the largest budget we will have ever passed in Congress (for defense) and it's a significant improvement on where we were before,” he said before the committee vote. Smith had already set aside some of his own priorities in a bid to win support from the panel's hawkish Republicans, who are likely to influence their caucus when it comes time to vote the bill out of the House. Without that support, Democrats may struggle to gather enough votes from progressives in their own caucus, who have questioned even the lower level of spending. But Senate Republicans have already set their authorization bill draft at $750 billion, a mark recommended by the White House and defended by HASC ranking member Mac Thornberry, R-Texas. He said that the figure is needed to keep pace with military modernization and readiness needs. Thornberry's amendment included a lengthy laundry list of weapons and platforms left out of the bill. “I worry that we talk about this like it's just numbers we're pulling out of the air,” he said. “These are real things. An aircraft carrier gets delayed a year if $733 billion is the way it comes out.” The bill includes a 3.1 percent pay raise for troops next January — a point of agreement on both sides that Smith repeatedly referenced — and provisions for increased protections for sexual assault victims, increased oversight of military housing problems and parameters for a new Space Corps within the Air Force. But fights over the effects of climate change on national security, limitations on the use of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and a provision mandating gender integration in Marine Corps basic training further divided the committee. On a series of Republican amendments aimed at preserving funds for the nuclear arsenal — including one to protect deployment of low-yield nuclear weapons on submarines — Democrats repeatedly defeated Republican proposals. Similarly, the committee upheld several provisions designed to put a check on President Donald Trump's ability to shift resources from the Defense Department to the U.S. southern border with Mexico. Democrats have accused Trump of abusing his emergency powers to shift Department of Defense funds for the border and send thousands of troops there. In the committee debate, Republicans generally argued Trump is taking necessary and normal steps to secure the border given political resistance to addressing the issue. “I want everybody to understand we have been sending DoD assets to the border since the Alamo,” said Rep. Mike Rogers, who sponsored one of the amendments. “We have to do it in order to keep our border secure and deal with the humanitarian crisis.” The measure now shifts to the full House, where Smith and Democratic leadership will have to build a coalition of supporters to get the measure to negotiations with the Senate. That chamber will vote on its draft next week. Work on a compromise draft between the House and Senate is expected to last through most of the summer and fall. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/06/13/house-panel-advances-733b-defense-budget-bill-over-gop-objections/
July 2, 2019 | International, Land
ARLINGTON, VA, June 28, 2019 -- Leonardo DRS, Inc. announced today that it has been selected by the U.S. Army to demonstrate its On-Board Vehicle Power (OBVP) technology on Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile battery command and control, and launcher vehicles. The system improvements will give air defense operators immediate access to electrical power directly from a vehicle's power train. Full article: https://www.leonardodrs.com/news-and-events/press-releases/leonardo-drs-to-integrate-on-board-vehicle-power-systems-on-thaad-vehicles/