The problem with that thinking is that there is just as much money in foreign sales. They were already required to use a U.S. company, which is why NG was involved, but if you require major contracts to be entirely US-owned, not only will other governments stop buying our planes and ships, but the US companies won’t win a bid for a foreign contract again. And our major defense contractors all make a significant amount of money in foreign sales.
I searched the web, and found these numbers, but I didn’t do any real work on them, so I present them as possibly correct:
For example, Boeing is 16%, and is expecting to expand foreign defense sales to 20%-25% of their defense totale.
LM is about 15% foreign, or about 5.5 billion (in 2006)
I couldn’t find a number for Northrup, but read things that suggest it’s pretty low.
I don’t know if these numbers include pass-thru sales to our government for delivery to foreign governments.
My point is that if everybody only buys defense stuff from their own country, we will lose out.
Which is why we don’t write the bids to preclude foreign involvement.
The entire system needs to be re-examined.