{"id":64548,"date":"2023-08-07T09:08:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T09:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2023\/08\/07\/whos-missing-from-the-top-100-list\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T00:54:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T00:54:20","slug":"whos-missing-from-the-top-100-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/commentary\/2023\/08\/07\/whos-missing-from-the-top-100-list\/","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s missing from the Top 100 list?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Over the years, the Defense News Top 100 list<\/a> has highlighted fundamental changes in the defense industry. Comparing lists from 2010 to 2023, one can see a rise of Chinese, Turkish and South Korean firms. They show the increasing prominence of services and information technology sectors as major components of the industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But one of the most salient features of the global defense industry mostly eludes visibility in the Top 100 list: the rise of private capital as critical players in the defense sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click here to see the Top 100, a ranking of the largest defense companies in the world.<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether controlled by private equity firms or families, privately owned firms play an increasingly prominent role across numerous defense market sectors. Privately owned defense firms \u2014 as opposed to those that are publicly traded or government-owned \u2014 used to be a rarity in the defense sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Washington, D.C.-based Carlyle Group was an early pioneer among private equity firms, having acquired defense-related properties in the 1980s. But it was in the 2000s that private equity firms started their rapid expansion into many sectors of the global economy, including defense, aerospace and government services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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(Source: Oliver Wyman)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Why are many of these players missing from the Defense News Top 100 list? Privately owned firms are not required by government regulators to disclose financial information, like revenue, margin or capital investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Open-source information is one of the principal means, along with a voluntary survey, by which Defense News compiles the annual Top 100 list. Many private firms choose to keep their financial indicators private. Those that do show up on the list \u2014 like Sierra Nevada Corp., ranked 57th in this year\u2019s edition \u2014 do so for their own reasons, such as brand awareness. The presence of companies like ManTech, Amentum and Peraton show some private equity owners are willing to share at least some details about the size of their defense operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means many increasingly prominent players in the global defense sector are absent from the Top 100 list. Publicly available U.S. Defense Department contract data suggests the scale of some of these missing companies (a contract value can be a proxy for revenue, but the two metrics are not equal):<\/p>\n\n\n\n