The Defense, security & space value chain: 40 U.S. stocks in 14 segments
Every U.S.-listed company Sectivia tracks in the Defense, security & space value chain, grouped by segment from upstream suppliers to downstream customers, with 45 mapped supplier-to-customer links and today's numbers.
Defense, security and space: from integrators and missiles to radar, drones, satellites and cyber defense. Driven by global rearmament, the protection of critical infrastructure and the commercialization of space. Companies are grouped by their role in the chain; click a card for the full profile.
Today
The Defense chain in numbers, from the latest close.
Data as of September 17, 2026 · updates daily after U.S. close
Defense integrators5 companies
The large primes that integrate complete defense systems and platforms.
Patriot and the wider missile and air-defense portfolio pull in one direction at RTX, the former Raytheon; Pratt & Whitney jet engines pull in another.
The F-35 fighter runs through everything Lockheed Martin does, and there is no bigger defense contractor.
Abrams tanks and land systems at one end, submarines and warships at the other, and in a corner of the group the Gulfstream business jets, which have nothing to do with either.
Weighted toward the strategic end of American defense.
Tactical radios and electronic warfare are the core, with space and sensor work beside them.
Drones & autonomous systems2 companies
Unmanned air and ground systems, a fast-growing defense segment.
Unmanned combat aircraft built to a low price point, alongside target drones and missile defense systems.
Switchblade loitering munitions and small tactical drones, a product line that has grown with demand for unmanned systems.
Military platforms5 companies
Aircraft, ships and vehicles, the physical platforms defense systems are built on.
Passenger jets are the public face of Boeing.
Turbine blades come out of Howmet's precision casting lines, along with aerospace fasteners and titanium structures.
Hundreds of small acquisitions, still run by the founding family.
Bell helicopters, Cessna and Beechcraft aircraft, plus military vehicles and drones.
Aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines for the US Navy, built at the country's biggest military shipyard, with a technology and services arm alongside.
Space industry & satellites6 companies
Launch, satellite communications and space systems, civil and military.
Electron puts small payloads in orbit today; the larger Neutron is still in development.
The idea is a satellite that an ordinary mobile phone can talk to directly.
Apple's emergency calling via satellite runs on Globalstar's network, which also carries ordinary communications and IoT traffic.
Satellite broadband for aircraft cabins and remote areas, plus secure links for defense customers.
Global coverage is the whole proposition.
- SpaceXprivate
Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy dominate orbital launch, Starlink belongs to the same company, and Starship is still in development.
Communications & defense data3 companies
IT services, secure communications and data analytics for defense and intelligence.
Contracted IT services and data analysis for US defense and intelligence customers, with security systems alongside.
Intelligence and surveillance systems for US defense and intelligence agencies, along with secure communications.
Consulting and technology work for the US government, weighted toward defense and intelligence, with AI a growing part of the mandate.
Dual-use technology6 companies
Technology with both civil and military uses, from sensors to avionics.
Jet engines for airliners and military aircraft, plus the service and spare-parts business that trails each one.
Radio systems for public-safety agencies, with video surveillance and command-center software built around them.
A conglomerate whose aerospace division is the part that matters here, supplying avionics and aircraft engines with the APUs that go with them.
High-margin proprietary aircraft parts, civil and military.
Tasers and body cameras for police forces, tied to the Axon Evidence cloud.
Imaging sensors and instrumentation, including the FLIR line and unmanned systems, sold into civil and military markets alike.
Identity & access management1 company
Secures who has access to apps and data, identity is the new perimeter.
Single sign-on and identity management, with Auth0 covering customer logins.
Endpoint security2 companies
Protects computers, servers and devices from malware and advanced attacks.
Endpoint security run from the cloud.
Singularity, an AI-driven endpoint and cloud platform aimed squarely at CrowdStrike.
Network security2 companies
Firewalls and network defense that inspect and filter traffic.
Network firewalls and SASE sit at the base, with the Cortex SOC tools and Prisma Cloud on top.
Designs its own ASIC chips, which is what sets the FortiGate firewalls apart, and builds out from there into SASE and OT security for critical infrastructure.
Cloud security2 companies
Zero trust and cloud-delivered security, protecting cloud workloads and access.
Sits in front of websites and applications on a global edge network, absorbing DDoS attacks while making the sites faster.
All traffic between users and applications is routed through Zscaler's cloud and inspected there.
Data security1 company
Protects sensitive data, classification, encryption and monitoring of data access.
Works on the data itself rather than the perimeter, finding sensitive files inside company systems and tracking who has access to them.
SOC, XDR & threat detection1 company
Detects and analyzes threats across the environment, security operations and XDR.
Elasticsearch was built for search and log analytics.
Vulnerability management3 companies
Maps and prioritizes weaknesses before attackers exploit them.
Vulnerability scanning and compliance monitoring, all of it delivered from the cloud.
Nessus scanning grew into exposure management: mapping weaknesses across IT and OT estates and ranking which ones to close first.
Two products under one roof: InsightVM for vulnerability management and InsightIDR for threat detection, aimed at mid-size and large enterprises.
Incident response & recovery2 companies
Backup, recovery and cyber resilience that bring systems back after attacks.
Ransomware recovery is the pitch, with backup delivered as SaaS.
Backup and recovery software, sold today as cyber resilience: getting systems running again after ransomware or an outage.
How the chain fits together
Sectivia has mapped 45 supplier-to-customer relationships between the 41 companies in this chain, 10 of them between companies in the same segment. The densest link runs from Dual-use technology to Defense integrators: 11 mapped relationships. The most connected company is Teledyne Technologies (TDY), with 9 customers in the map.