GE Aerospace Stands Ready to Continue Its 100-Year Partnership with the U.S. Military, CEO Culp Says at Reagan National Defense Forum

Each December, a good portion of America’s military and defense leadership makes a winter pilgrimage to sunny Simi Valley, California. There, at the Reagan Library and Presidential Center, they meet with policymakers, industry heads, and journalists to discuss the future of the country’s security at the Reagan National Defense Forum. At this year’s convocation, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, the keynote speaker, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell were on hand, and both were recognized with the Ronald Reagan Peace Through Strength Award for their lifetime contributions to the country’s national defense and its men and women in uniform.   

GE Aerospace has a 100-year history of partnering with the U.S. military, and it shows: A full two-thirds of the country’s military aircraft are powered by its technology. This marks the first year that GE Aerospace has participated in the Reagan Forum as a standalone company. According to Chairman and CEO Larry Culp, maintaining a solid relationship with the military requires investment in people and a constant effort to deliver value to customers. “We’ve really viewed 2024 as the year of investment with respect to our entire supply line. That’s meant $100 million into our suppliers. It’s $125 million in facility upgrades, just in our defense footprint.” 

Culp was speaking in a panel discussion, “Building the Blueprint: Force Structure, Resources, and the Next National Defense Strategy,” which looked ahead to the 2026 release of the National Defense Strategy, published every four years. Appearing with Culp were Rep. Ken Calvert, chair of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee; U.S. Navy Admiral Samuel J. Paparo Jr.; and U.S. Marine Corps General Eric M. Smith. The panel discussed how to ensure continued U.S. military strength in the face of increasingly complex geopolitical challenges, with both a military and a defense industrial base ready to meet future needs. 

Culp said that GE Aerospace’s lean operating model, known as FLIGHT DECK, which brings together safety, quality, delivery time, and cost improvements, is how the company is helping suppliers improve operations to deliver for its customers — deploying more than 600 engineers into its own supplier base to help solve problems and improving delivery at a key subset of priority supplier sites by 18% quarter over quarter this year. “FLIGHT DECK, which is our proprietary lean operating model, can really problem-solve at the point of impact. And this has just been a critical element for us to drive better output through the course of the year.”

While GE Aerospace is a leader in the defense innovation space, leveraging cutting-edge manufacturing, materials, and technology to ensure next-gen capabilities and continued U.S. air superiority, Culp said it’s important to always focus on the human aspect and to invest in people. When GE Aerospace became a standalone business last April — retaining the long-standing GE ticker on the New York Stock Exchange — it distributed shares to all its employees. “We made all 52,000 of our teammates shareholders,” Culp said. “So for the folks in Evendale, Ohio, in Madisonville, Kentucky, in Lynn, Massachusetts, who are really the backbone of our defense industrial base, they have a vested interest in what we’re doing.” When it comes to creating value and delivering for customers like the U.S. military, he added, “I wouldn’t want anyone to think that it’s fundamentally about rooftops and machines. It’s about people.” 

The Reagan National Defense Forum took place December 6–7, 2024, in Simi Valley, California. The full slate of videos can be viewed at the Reagan Foundation’s YouTube channel, and the panel in which GE Aerospace Chairman and CEO Culp appeared can be viewed here.