Talk:List of defense contractors

Merging
i wonder why not merge with private military contractor ? Jabbi 00:01, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Although private military contractors are arguably a subset of "defense contractors," there is a clear distinction which is explained in the intro to the PMC article. Defense contractors provide products and/or services to the military; in general usage, the term refers to manufacturers of weapons, vehicles, etc., and the services those firms supply are usually directly related to their products (training, etc.) On the other hand, PMCs provide armed personnel who directly engage in combat activities - soldiers for hire. Merging the articles doesn't make sense to me. Engineer Bob 06:22, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Alternatively, how about a merge with defense industry? Right now both of these articles are pretty much just stubs, but combined, there's a decent amount of content. If defense contractor grows enough, it can get split out again into its own page. -- Hongooi 11:10, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Why does Northrop Grumman show up twice? Sandy of the CSARs (talk) 00:02, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Incorrect Data!

The figures on the table are infact '07 revenue figures rather than '08 as stated (click on the source which is the BBC Website and look at the source 'Source: Sipri. All figures from 2007.') See this link for the top 100 defence contractors

Real 2008 numbers from SIPRI
..are now available on http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/production/Top100, date should be 12 April 2010 from http://www.sipri.org/media/pressreleases/100412top100. I don't know how to edit that table easily ? How come no autosign bot is present on this Talk page? TGCP (talk) 16:18, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * sorry for the format - please make it prettier, I can't program table stuff. Method of update: mark section on external link, copy to spreadsheet (OpenOffice Calc), use http://excel2wiki.net/wikipedia.php and paste to wiki. Found on Help:Table TGCP (talk) 17:08, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The WaTech says "Data is collected on government expenditures related to information technology products and services, systems integration, telecommunications, professional services and engineering services" which does not sound like weapons. Each source seem to have different definitions of defense, with SIPRI (70%) and |DefNews 92%, where WaTech is about 26% (11/42). However, DefNews does not state which definition they use, so SIPRI is likely the best defined. TGCP (talk) 21:54, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * DefNews and SIPRI have similar numbers for total revenue and defense revenue, where WaTech have considerably lower numbers, and does not seem to count hardware. TGCP (talk) 22:11, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Also, WaTech seem to count only US government sales, not world sales. TGCP (talk) 22:14, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

What is a Defense Contractor?
A defense contractor as suggested by the loose definition provided in this article, is a company that provides goods and services to the defense industry whether local or overseas ( Aerospace, Electronic Systems, Information Systems, etc) Not just weapons! Provided "weapon sales" is not an accurate indication of a defense contractors contributions and only reflects a very small percentage of actual sales!!

Feel free to check any other site that ranks defense contractors and see how it is actually done. The source you provide only ranks based on weapon sales and should be quoted in a separate area of this article —Preceding unsigned comment added by Djdoublestack (talk • contribs) 22:12, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

On the contrary, SIPRI and DefNews count all defense related sales, where WaTech counts the "soft" category of sales (IT services and such), as is suggested by the much lower numbers of WaTech. TGCP (talk) 22:17, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

DS- —Preceding unsigned comment added by Djdoublestack (talk • contribs) 22:25, 7 June 2010 (UTC) Ok, you want to quote defense news as a source but everything on the web that accounts for ALL sales, including weapons has Lockheed Martin as #1 for the past 3 years...check out everyone of these sources, including your Defense News.

Washington Technology - http://washingtontechnology.com FAS.org - http://www.fas.org/asmp/profiles/deffirm.html Defense News - http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4196688&c=FEA&s=T1C Defense Systems - http://defensesystems.com/articles/2010/05/27/top-20-defense-contractors.aspx Government Executive - http://www.govexec.com/features/0808-15/0808-15s3s1.htm Global Security.org - http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/industry/top100.htm —Preceding  comment added by Djdoublestack (talk • contribs) 22:24, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

As stated above, it is a matter of definition what is defense and what is not - WaTech and DefNews disagree the most, with 26% and 92% defense part of total, respectively. Emphasis should be put on verifiability, not on who is number one and so on. You have put good effort into changing the table, unfortunately the WaTech numbers are not relevant for this article. Feel free to put appropriate numbers into the table, and add a column for 2009 numbers. As you are new here, there are some things to learn about doing things the Wiki way. Thank you for your efforts. TGCP (talk) 22:31, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate you noticing that I am new(to editing) here but it still does not change the fact that you are basing your numbers (the numbers of SIPRI)which it clearly states are weapon sales ONLY. The reason I stated who is "number one" was just to show you that defense contractors are ranked based on Total sales and not sales of one small portion of their company. That would be like me providing numbers of Ford Motors based on their extended warranty sales and not of the entire company. They would be true but would not show what the company is and does. This is why every major authority shows the top companies based on their total sales and then give info that breaks up those sales. I agree that weapon sales for a defense contractor are important but do not provide an accurate depiction of what a defense contractor is and does. The information that SIPRI should be in this article, but only as additional information. Djdoublestack (talk) 22:51, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect; |DefNews also ranks by defense sales which is why LM is ranked above Boeing, SIPRI is just a little more conservative/restrained/thorough than DefNews in counting what is defense (although it means that LM has civilian content at least 6 times larger than BAE, which is debatable). We should have a second column for DefNews data, and/or perhaps pie charts for every company showing size of total revenue with portion of defense. I don't know how to manage the layout with pies much larger than others, though. TGCP (talk) 18:24, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

May be?
"Under 1949 Geneva Conventions military contractors engaged in direct support of military operations may be legitimate targets of military attacks." I'm not sure if this is overly paraphrased or not, but it needs to be looked into. There shouldn't be a "may be" in this context. You're either a legitimate target, or not. You're either directly supporting or not. That's not something that should be "subject to discretion" if they clearly define what qualifies a company as a defense contractor. I hope someone has the time and expertise to source this wording and correct it if need be. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.0.107.248 (talk) 01:27, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

When the Queen informs you that you may leave the room, you stay at your own peril... Also note that the construction allows for conditional interpretation where other paragraphs in the convention might have precedence. /BP 78.70.77.35 (talk) 19:35, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Requested move 02 November 2013

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved to List of defense contractors with Defense contractor becoming a redirect to Arms industry. (non-admin closure) Steel1943  (talk) 05:37, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Defense contractor → List of defense contractors – Per the merge proposal, most of the lead paragraph is redundant, having been covered in Arms industry. The valuable remaining piece of the article is the list. Hence the suggestion that we should rename to focus the article solely on the list. Oncenawhile (talk) 19:07, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Survey

 * Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with  or  , then sign your comment with  . Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.


 * Support, provided that Defense contractor will redirect to Arms industry.   - WPGA2345 -     ☛   21:09, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

 * Any additional comments:
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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