Leonardo DRS, Inc. (‘DRS’) provides advanced defense technology to the U.S. national security customers and allies around the world. The company is a subsidiary of Leonardo S.p.A.
The company specializes in the design, development, and manufacture of advanced sensing, network computing, force protection, and electric power and propulsion technologies and solutions.
From the company’s earliest offerings to today’s best-in-class product offerings, including naval propulsion, electro-optical sens...
Leonardo DRS, Inc. (‘DRS’) provides advanced defense technology to the U.S. national security customers and allies around the world. The company is a subsidiary of Leonardo S.p.A.
The company specializes in the design, development, and manufacture of advanced sensing, network computing, force protection, and electric power and propulsion technologies and solutions.
From the company’s earliest offerings to today’s best-in-class product offerings, including naval propulsion, electro-optical sensors, electronic warfare systems, and other mission-critical technologies, the company has continually sought to develop advanced technologies enabling solutions to address complex national security challenges. The company continues to target its investments toward high-growth areas of the U.S. defense budget. The company’s diverse technologies, systems, and solutions are used across land, air, sea, space, and cyber domains on a wide range of platforms for the U.S. Department of Defense (the ‘DoD’) and the defense agencies of its international allies. Across the spectrum of multi-domain operations, the company’s core capabilities will help the U.S. and its allies maintain a strategic advantage over their adversaries.
Segments
The company consists of eight business units, which are organized as two operating segments: Advanced Sensing and Computing, and Integrated Mission Systems.
Advanced Sensing and Computing
The company’s Advanced Sensing and Computing (‘ASC’) segment designs, develops, and manufactures sensing and network computing technology that enables real-time situational awareness required for enhanced operational decision-making and execution by its customers.
The company’s sensing capabilities span numerous applications, including missions requiring advanced detection, precision targeting, and surveillance sensing, long-range electro-optic/infrared (‘EO/IR’), signals intelligence (‘SIGINT’), and other intelligence systems, electronic warfare (‘EW’), ground vehicle sensing, next-generation active electronically scanned array tactical radars, dismounted soldier sensing, and space sensing. Across the company’s offerings, it is focused on advancing sensor distance and enhancing the precision, clarity, definition, spectral depth, and effectiveness of its sensors. The company also seeks to leverage the knowledge and expertise built through its experience to optimize size, weight, power, and cost for its customers’ specific mission requirements.
The company’s sensing capabilities are complemented by its rugged, trusted, and cyber-resilient network computing products. The company’s network computing offerings are utilized across a broad range of mission applications, including platform computing on ground and shipboard (both surface ship and submarine) for advanced battle management, combat systems, radar, command and control (‘C2’), tactical networks, tactical computing, and communications. These products help support the DoD’s need for greater situational understanding at the tactical edge by rapidly transmitting data securely between command centers and forward-positioned defense assets and personnel.
Integrated Mission Systems
The company’s Integrated Mission Systems (‘IMS’) segment designs, develops, manufactures, and integrates power conversion, control, and distribution systems, ship propulsion systems, motors, and variable frequency drives, force protection systems, and transportation and logistics systems for the U.S. military and allied defense customers.
DRS is a leading provider of next-generation electrical propulsion systems for the U.S. Navy. The company provides power conversion, control, distribution, and propulsion systems for the U.S. Navy’s top priority shipbuilding programs, including the Columbia Class ballistic missile submarine, the first modern U.S. electric drive submarine.
DRS is well-positioned to meet the needs of an increasingly electrified fleet with the company’s high-efficiency, power-dense permanent magnet motors, energy storage systems, and associated efficient, rugged, and compact power conversion, electrical actuation systems, and advanced cooling technologies.
DRS has a long history of providing a number of other critical products to the U.S. Navy with a significant installed base on submarines, aircraft carriers, and other surface ships, including motor controllers, instrumentation and control equipment, electrical actuation systems, and thermal management systems for electronics and ship stores refrigeration.
DRS is also an integrator of complex systems in ground vehicles for short-range air defense, counter-unmanned aerial systems (‘C-UAS’), and vehicle survivability and protection. The company’s short-range air defense systems integrate EW equipment, reconnaissance and surveillance systems, modular combat vehicle turrets, and stabilized sensor suites, as well as kinetic countermeasures to protect against evolving threats. The company’s force protection systems, including solutions for C-UAS and active protection systems on army vehicles, help protect personnel and defense assets from enemy combatants.
Customers
The U.S. government is the company’s largest customer. Revenues derived directly or indirectly from the U.S. government represented 79% of its total revenues for the full year 2024. The company’s U.S. government sales are concentrated with the DoD, which constitutes the majority of its U.S. government revenue for any given year, including the entirety of its government sales in 2024. The company’s revenues with the DoD span the Navy, Army, Air Force, and other DoD agencies, which represented 37%, 32%, 3%, and 7%, respectively, of the company’s total revenues for 2024.
The remaining 21% of the company’s revenues for 2024 were derived from sales to foreign governments, as well as commercial sales within the U.S. and abroad. The company’s international sales primarily consist of transactions with foreign governments for defense applications.
Contracts
As a mid-tier defense company with a diverse portfolio of technology that includes offerings at the system, sub-system and component level, the company approaches each market opportunity with the flexibility and agility inherent in a mid-sized defense company to provide the most value to its customers.
The company serves as either prime contractor or a subcontractor on key contracts based on the competitive dynamics of each opportunity. For 2024, the company’s revenue consisted of 37% as a prime contractor direct with the government and 63% as a subcontractor, typically as a system provider to the platform provider.
The company derives a significant portion of its revenue from long-term programs and programs for which the company is the incumbent supplier or has been the sole or dual supplier for many years. A significant percentage of its revenue is derived from programs that are in the production phase.
While the majority of the company’s revenue is derived from the U.S. government, the company has a diverse business mix within the U.S. government funding.
The company also holds an approximately 11% interest in Hoverfly Technologies, Inc. (Hoverfly), which designs, develops and manufactures power-tethered unmanned aerial systems and related products.
Research and Development (R&D)
The company-funded R&D costs charged to general and administrative expenses totaled $92 million in 2024.
Seasonality
A significant portion of its revenue, profit, and cash flows are generated in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year (year ended December 31, 2024).
Legislation and Regulation
The company (including its subcontractors and others with whom it does business) is also subject to, and expected to perform in compliance with, a vast array of federal, state, local, and international laws, regulations, and requirements related to the company’s industry, its products, and the businesses it operates. These laws and regulations include, but are not limited to, the Anti-Kickback Act, the Arms Export Control Act, including the ITAR, the Communications Act, the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement, the Export Control Reform Act, including the EAR (which includes anti-boycott provisions), the False Claims Act, the Federal Acquisition Regulation, the FCPA, the Lobbying Disclosure Act, the Procurement Integrity Act, the Truthful Cost or Pricing Data Act, the Foreign Trade Regulations, the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Trading with the Enemy Act, and Executive Orders and regulations, administered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control, as well as rules and regulations administered by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
As a U.S. defense contractor with high-level personnel and facility security clearances, DRS, the company’s immediate majority stockholder US Holding, LLC, and its indirect majority stockholder Leonardo S.p.A. have entered into a proxy agreement with the DoD to mitigate against the potential for undue foreign ownership control and influence (‘FOCI’) on the performance of classified programs by implementing various limitations on US Holding’s and Leonardo S.p.A.’s rights as the direct foreign majority stockholder of DRS, respectively. Specifically, US Holding has authorized certain cleared U.S. persons to operate as its proxies and exercise the key prerogatives of stock ownership. The company is operating under an interim proxy agreement while it seeks to enter into a new proxy agreement with the DoD.
At all times subject to the proxy agreement, on November 28, 2022, the company entered into a registration rights agreement (the ‘Registration Rights Agreement’), as well as a cooperation agreement (the ‘Cooperation Agreement’) with Leonardo S.p.A. and US Holding. The Registration Rights Agreement, among other things, provides Leonardo S.p.A. and its affiliated entities with customary demand, shelf, and piggy-back registration rights to facilitate a public offering of the company’s Common Stock held by US Holding.
History
Leonardo DRS, Inc. was incorporated in 1968.