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[This article was originally published in April, 2021 at which time Raytheon had obtained $2.36 billion in Pentagon contracts since Austin’s appointment. Since that time, CAM has kept tabs on Raytheon’s contracts and the article has been updated.—Editors]

The Pentagon has awarded the defense giant Raytheon Technologies, the second largest weapons-maker in the world, over $30 billion in government contracts since Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III’s confirmation on January 22nd, 2021.

 Jeremy Kuzmarov

Austin was on Raytheon’s board of directors prior to his confirmation.

Austin at the time had made a commitment to resign from Raytheon’s board and recuse himself from all matters concerning Raytheon for four years and agreed to divest from his financial holdings in the company, amounting to between $500,000 and $1.7 million in stock.

These initiatives, however, have not prevented Austin from using his position to bolster Raytheon’s fortunes. Nor those of other defense contractors on whose board he has sat such as Booz Allen Hamilton, the world’s “most profitable spy organization,” according to Bloomberg News, and Pine Island Capital, a private equity firm that invests in military industry.[1]

At Austin’s nomination hearing, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) questioned him about his ties to Raytheon—whose headquarters are based in Warren’s home district (Waltham, Massachusetts).

A year earlier, Warren had proposed legal changes to strengthen ethics at the Defense Department by blocking the revolving door between the Pentagon and giant defense contractors like Raytheon, including by prohibiting big defense contractors from hiring former Pentagon officials for four years after they leave government.

Warren paradoxically voted to confirm Austin’s appointment as Defense Secretary—even though he embodies the danger of the revolving door.

Mark Pocan (D-WI), who with Barbara Lee wrote a letter in November 2020 to President-elect Joe Biden requesting that he nominate a Secretary of Defense with no previous ties to weapons manufacturers, stated that “American national security should not be defined by the bottom lines of Boeing, General Dynamics and Raytheon.”

With men like Austin at the helm, however, it is very clearly being defined in this way.

Reporting revenues of more than $67 billion in 2022, up from $64 billion in 2021 and $56 billion in 2020, Raytheon began its corporate life in 1922 as the American Appliance Company. It developed refrigerators and radio parts and made advances in vacuum tube technology and related electronics. 

The company was drawn into military contracting during World War II when it manufactured magnetron tubes for use in radar systems.

One of Raytheon’s founders, Vannevar Bush, became president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and chairman of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) during World War II, which initiated the Manhattan Project that led to the development of the atomic bomb.

Today, Raytheon is best known as the maker of Patriot and Tomahawk missiles.

It has also been a pioneer in the development of surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles and precision weapons—including guided missiles and laser-guided bombs—and manufactures air-launched nuclear missiles that are part of the U.S. nuclear triad.

Raytheon’s profits have increased considerably as a result of the Ukraine War: it manufactures Stinger and Javelin missiles, “the world’s premier shoulder-fired anti-armor system” that have been sold to Ukraine along with the Patriot Defense system.

READ MORE:

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/03/10/defense-secretary-lloyd-austin-former-member-of-raytheon-board-of-directors-has-awarded-over-30-billion-in-contracts-to-raytheon-since-his-confirmation-in-january-2021/

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