Military aircraft

This category is for the companies that build combat, transport and trainer aircraft. The radar, the mission computer and the electronic warfare suite inside one are bought in defense electronics and mission systems, and an uncrewed aircraft is bought in uncrewed systems. What is left here is the airframe programme, and it is a government purchase governed by rules a commercial aircraft buyer never meets.

The export rules classify the aircraft before you do

The United States Munitions List enumerates aircraft as defense articles by what they are and what they carry: bombers, fighters and fixed-wing attack aircraft, turbofan or turbojet trainers used to train pilots for fighter, attack or bomber aircraft, attack helicopters, and aircraft specially designed to carry a defense article for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare, or command and control.¹ The same category covers the technical data directly related to those articles and the defense services performed on them.¹ Read that twice if you are a training operator or a foreign customer. An aircraft that looks like a civil type in a brochure can be a controlled article on the list, which changes who may hold the drawings, who may attend the design review, and how long an approval takes. Ask the supplier for the classification it applies to the configuration being offered to you, and ask what it is based on.

Data rights decide who can sustain the fleet

In a defense contract the rights in technical data are negotiated, and the definitions are published. Unlimited rights let the government use and disclose data without restriction, government purpose rights run for five years or another negotiated period on data developed with mixed funding, and limited rights keep the data inside the government, which may not use it for manufacture or release it without the asserting party's written permission.² Those three words decide whether a second source can ever be competed, whether a depot can repair the aircraft, and what a sustainment contract will cost in fifteen years. Ask which assertions accompany the proposal, line by line, and price the ones you are agreeing to.

What the specification actually calls out

Military drawings call out defense standards and specifications, and they are published. The Defense Logistics Agency's document register lets anyone search a standard by number or by term and see whether it is active, inactive or cancelled, with the dates.³ That check is cheap and it catches a real failure: a quotation written against a cancelled revision, or against a specification whose superseding document changed the qualification requirement.

Where the public record can be checked

Federal award data is public, and it names who received contracts, for how much, and when.⁴ A supplier's registration is public too: an entity doing federal business registers and holds a unique entity identifier, and the same system carries supply chain security orders.⁵ Awards prove that a contract was signed and what it was worth. They do not prove that the aircraft performed, that the schedule held, or that the programme was not restructured afterwards, and no register will tell you that. For those, ask the customer, not the seller.

Questions that sort suppliers

Ask for the export classification of the exact configuration, in writing. Ask which data rights assertions apply to the aircraft, the mission systems and the ground support equipment. Ask which specifications the build is against and at what revision. Ask what the last three comparable programmes delivered against their original schedules.

The companies below are listed on public facts, each with its source linked.