[Cicero]

This seems to be a reasonably objective article. The only twitch of obvious political spin is in their list of important recipients of campaign donations: "Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi and a former Republican national chairman; Otto Reich, who persuaded Congress to sell F-16's to Chile before becoming President Bush's main Latin America policy aide in 2002; and Norman Y. Mineta, the transportation secretary and former member of Congress."

Note that Haley Barbour is identified as a Republican but Norman Minetta is ot identified as a Democrat. But that's just some sort of knee-jerk reflex on the writer's part, I imagine.

[JasonC]

Well, they also don't seem to understand the real role Lockheed performs or the structure of the industry. They are systems integrators. They do overall design and final assembly, and a lot of IT stuff internally. But they also have scads of subcontractors, from large sub-system makers like Raytheon to tiny specialty firms that provide single pieces of software or manufacture commodity components. The overall budget for a major system flows through Lockheed, but out of it as well - to its workers and to its outsourced suppliers. Wondering why there are 3-4 large defense contractors is a bit silly, like wondering why there are only a few big auto companies. It doesn't mean everyone who works in auto related industries is an employee of the big three. It just means they are the systems integrators and final assemblers, so the industry's sales flow through them.