November 11, 2021updated 11 Apr 2022 3:00pm

Revealed: the defense companies best positioned to weather future industry disruption

Leidos leads in an USA-heavy top ten based on extensive research by GlobalData.

Leidos is the aerospace and defence company best positioned to take advantage of future defense disruption in the sector, according to GlobalData analysts.

The USA-based firm comes top of the list in a ranking of overall leadership in the themes that matter most among defense companies.

These themes, which can be defined as any issues that keep CEOs awake at night, describe technological, macroeconomic and industry-specific challenges that companies are currently facing, as well as the opportunities they create. GlobalData’s Thematic Research ecosystem identifies and tracks these challenges, and how they create the long-term winners and losers of the mining industry.

Leidos scored highly in several areas, particularly when it comes to China Impact, Autonomous Vehicles, High Intensity Warfare, Hypersonic Technologies, Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Military Things, where it received top marks of five out of five.

Leidos received scores of four for Drones, ESG, M&A and Soldier Modernization performances.

These scores represent GlobalData analysts’ assessments of the competitiveness of each company regarding a particular theme. They are then weighted based on their importance and used to create the final industry ranking.

Leidos is followed in our ranking by Raytheon Technologies, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

The interactive graphic below allows you to compare company ratings across the 10 themes in question. The higher up a company is on the list, the better positioned it is to weather disruption in the future, while the companies at the bottom are more vulnerable to disruptive threats.

Click on any of the companies to compare them across all the themes in our analysis.

Our analysis reveals that companies from USA are some of the best-prepared players in the defense game. Companies from France and Italy also performed well.

These scores are based on overall technology, macroeconomic and sector-specific leadership in 10 of the key themes that matter most to the mining industry and are generated by GlobalData analysts' assessments.

This article is based on GlobalData research figures as of 11 April, 2022. For more up to date figures, check the GlobalData website.