structural:reformatting, information:extraction, structural:summarization
Consolidation

Several consolidations took place in the aerospace and defense industries over the last few decades.

Airbus prominently illustrated the European airliner manufacturing consolidation in the late 1960s.

Between 1988 and 2010, more than 5,452 mergers and acquisitions with a total known-value of US$579 billion were announced worldwide.

In 1993, then United States Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and his deputy William J. Perry held the "Last Supper" at the Pentagon with contractors executives who were told that there were twice as many military suppliers as he wanted to see: $55 billion in military–industry mergers took place from 1992 to 1997, leaving mainly Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon. Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas for US$13.3 billion in 1996. Raytheon acquired Hughes Aircraft Company for $9.5 billion in 1997.

BAE Systems is the successor company to numerous British aircraft manufacturers which merged throughout the second half of the 20th century. Many of these mergers followed the 1957 Defence White Paper. Marconi Electronic Systems, a subsidiary of the General Electric Company plc, was acquired by British Aerospace for US$12.3 billion in 1999 merger, to form BAE Systems.

In 2002, when Fairchild Dornier was bankrupt, Airbus, Boeing or Bombardier declined to take the 728JET /928JET large regional jet program as mainline and regional aircraft manufacturers were split and Airbus was digesting its ill-fated Fokker acquisition a decade earlier.

On September 4, 2017, United Technologies acquired Rockwell Collins in cash and stock for $23 billion, $30 billion including Rockwell Collins' net debt, for $500+ million of synergies expected by year four.

The Oct. 16, 2017 announcement of the CSeries partnership between Airbus and Bombardier Aerospace could trigger a daisy chain of reactions towards a new order. Airbus gets a new, efficient model at the lower end of the narrowbody market which provides the bulk of airliner profits and can abandon the slow selling A319 while Bombardier benefits from the growth in this expanded market even if it holds a smaller residual stake. Boeing could forge a similar alliance with either Embraer with its E-jet E2 or Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and its MRJ.

On 21 December, Boeing and Embraer confirmed to be discussing a potential combination with a transaction subject to Brazilian government regulators, the companies' boards and shareholders approvals. The weight of Airbus and Boeing could help E2 and CSeries sales but the 100-150 seats market seems slow. As the CSeries, renamed A220, and E-jet E2 are more capable than their predecessors, they moved closer to the lower end of the narrowbodies. In 2018, the four Western airframers combined into two within nine months as Boeing acquired 80% of Embraer's airliners for $3.8 billion on July 5.

On April 3, 2020, Raytheon and United Technologies Corporation (except Otis Worldwide, leaving Rockwell Collins and engine maker Pratt and Whitney) merged to form Raytheon Technologies Corporation, with combined sales of $79 billion in 2019.

The most prominent unions between 1995 and 2020 include those of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas; the French, German and Spanish parts of EADS; and United Technologies with Rockwell Collins then Raytheon, but many mergers projects did not went through: Textron-Bombardier, EADS-BAE Systems, Hawker Beechcraft-Superior Aviation, GE-Honeywell, BAE Systems-Boeing (or Lockheed Martin), Dassault-Aerospatiale, Safran-Thales, BAE Systems-Rolls-Royce or Lockheed Martin–Northrop Grumman.