General Dynamics

'Strength on Your Side' means that General Dynamics delivers what it promises. We intend to maintain financial, technological, and managerial strength to benefit our shareholders, our customers, and our employees. Key Dates: Company is reorganized and reincorporated as Electric Boat Company; expansion into surface ships begins. John Jay Hopkins joins company and is instrumental in its revival through the production of hundreds of submarines, surface ships, and PT boats during World War II. General Dynamics acquires Consolidated Vultee Aircraft, which becomes the Convair Division; Electric Boat launches the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus. General Dynamics purchases Chrysler's battle tank division, which becomes the Land Systems Division. With end of Cold War, new CEO William A. Anders begins divestment program that reduces the company to two businesses by The company's Information Systems and Technology unit begins to be built through a series of acquisitions. National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, owner of a San Diego naval shipyard, is acquired. General Dynamics completes two major acquisitions: Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation, maker of business jets, and three information systems units of GTE Corporation. General Dynamics Corporation is a leading defense contractor, with nearly 60 percent of the company's net sales coming from contracts with the U.S. government. The company's largest operating unit is Marine Systems, which accounts for about one-third of sales, is the leading supplier of combat vessels to the U.S. Navy, and includes Electric Boat Corporation (the founding company), maker of the Seawolf and Virginia-class submarines; and Bath Iron Works (acquired in 1995), maker of destroyers and amphibious assault ships. The Combat Systems unit, which generates about 12 percent of net sales, produces the M1 tank for the U.S. Army (a business purchased from Chrysler Corporation in 1982) as well as other land and amphibious assault vehicles; it also makes gun and ammunition handling systems, reactive armor, and ordnance. Accounting for nearly one-quarter of sales is the Information Systems and Technology unit, which offers to both defense and commercial customers a wide range of technologies, including communication, computer, defense, electronic, information, and telecommunications systems. The Information Systems unit was created out of a series of acquisitions that began in 1997. Generating the bulk of General Dynamics' revenues from commercial customers is its Aerospace unit, which consists of Gulfstream Aerospace (acquired in 1999), one of the world's leading makers of business aircraft. Approximately 30 percent of overall revenues are derived from the operations of Gulfstream. General Dynamics has a long history in weapons production, originating in the late 19th century with an Irish-American inventor named John Holland. Associated with the Fenians, a secret New York City organization sympathetic to the struggles of the Irish nationalists, Holland was commissioned to construct a submarine capable of destroying British naval vessels. While previous submarine designs had been attempted by other inventors, none were effective warships, and, in fact, several of Holland's first submarines sank. Moreover, his ill-conceived attempts at secrecy soon drew the attention of American law enforcement authorities, who prevented Holland from achieving his mission for the Fenians. Nevertheless, Holland remained interested in building a viable submarine, and, toward that end, he founded the Electric Boat Company in 1899, with financial backing from investors that later would include various members of Congress. Electric Boat gained a reputation for unscrupulous arms dealing in 1904-05, when it sold submarines to Japan and Russia, who were then at war. Holland submarines were also sold to the British Royal Navy through the English armaments company Vickers. Submarines, which had once been denounced in Britain as 'dam