History
The company started as a division of the agricultural machine business, Food Machinery Corporation (FMC), when they won a US government contract to build LVTs and became a weapon manufacturer during World War II. Bowen McLaughlin York (later the BMY division of Harsco Corporation) also began building tanks around this time and airplanes.
Following a massive decline in orders for tracked combat vehicles between 1983 and 1994 FMC and the Harsco Corporation agreed in January 1994 to combine their defense businesses to form United Defense. The new company owned the former FMC California-based Ground Systems Division and Harsco's Pennsylvania-based BMY Combat Systems Division. The new company restructured its operations to concentrate final assembly and testing to Pennsylvania.
In September 2000, UDI purchased Bofors Weapon Systems AB of Sweden, subsequently renamed Bofors Defence.
UDI was subject to a takeover bid by rival General Dynamics in 1997 but instead chose a (lower) bid from private equity firm The Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group floated the company in 2001 but retained a share of the company.
Read more about this topic: United Defense
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“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
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