The company L3Harris, which is one of the main partners of the US Department of Defense and supplies weapons to Ukraine, bought Aerojet Rocketdyne. Earlier, the agreement on the sale of this rocket engine manufacturer Lockheed Martin was blocked by the US government.
L3 Harris bought Aerojet Rocketdyne
Chris Kubasik, CEO of L3Harris, one of the largest U.S. defense contractors, announced that his company had officially completed the purchase of Aerojet Rocketdyne. This company remained the last independent manufacturer of rocket engines in the United States. 5,000 of its employees now officially work for this manufacturer of weapons and control systems.
Aerojet Rocketdyne has its headquarters located in El Segundo, California. The company is known for simultaneously producing jet engines for civilian spacecraft, ballistic missiles and tactical weapons.
In turn, L3Harris are known for being one of the key players in the supply of advanced weapons systems to Ukraine. In addition, helping to fight the invasion of the Russians, the company received many profitable orders.
Why the company was not sold to Lockheed Martin
L3Harris bought Aerojet Rocketdyne for USD 4.7 billion and the US government had no complaints about this transaction. This is quite interesting, because the history of the sale of this company stretches back to 2020. Then Lockheed Martin, one of NASA’s largest suppliers, tried to buy it. In the winter, they even announced that they would buy an engine manufacturer for USD 4.4 billion.
But then the US government simply banned the sale, citing national security interests. American officials feared that the company would become a monopolist and simply not sell engines to its competitors, who, at the same time, were partners of important state organizations.
It is known that one of the important points thanks to which this deal was resolved was the fact that L3Harris assured everyone that Aerojet Rocketdyne engines would be available on the free market. They still cannot monopolize it, since their main production is concentrated in the field of armaments.
It was to increase the production of rocket engines supplied to Ukraine that L3Harris bought Aerojet Rocketdyne. And the government even allocated them USD 215.6 million for this. According to Chris Kubasik, this money will be spent on the modernization of the company’s production and wider use of information technologies in the technological process.
According to spacenews.com
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