General Dynamics Corp

General Dynamics supplies the Israeli military with a wide variety of weapons, including various bombs. The company's technologies are also integrated into Israel's main weapon systems, including fighter jets and armored combat vehicles. These weapons are often gifted to Israel through the U.S. government's Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program.

For years, these weapons have repeatedly been used against Palestinian civilians, resulting in numerous casualties as well as mass destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, and water and electric systems. These attacks include war crimes that Israel committed during several military offenses against the Gaza Strip, which has been illegally blockaded since 2007:

• 2022 ("Operation Breaking Dawn"): Within three days of an unprovoked offensive, Israel killed at least 33 Palestinians, including 17 civilians. Evidence of war crimes was recorded by Amnesty International.
• 2021 ("Operation Guardian of the Walls"): During this assault, Israel killed at least 261 Palestinians, including 67 children and 41 women. At least half of the fatalities were civilians, and more than 2,200 additional Palestinians were injured. Evidence of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity was published by Palestinian human rights organizations Al-Haq, Al Mezan, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights; Amnesty International; and Human Rights Watch. The International Criminal Court announced that it will examine these cases.
• 2014 ("Operation Protective Edge"): During this 50-day assault, Israel killed at least 2,131 Palestinians, at least 1,463 of whom were civilians, including 501 children and 257 women. At least 11,100 Palestinians were wounded, including 3,374 children. Evidence of war crimes was published by Palestinian human rights organizations Al-Haq and Al Mezan; Israeli organization B'Tselem; Amnesty International; and Human Rights Watch.
• 2012 ("Operation Pillar of Defense"): Israel killed 174 Palestinians, 101 of whom were civilians, including 33 children and 13 women. Evidence of Israeli war crimes was published by the UN, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.
• 2008–2009 ("Operation Cast Lead"): During this 22-day assault, Israel killed at least 1,385 Palestinians, including at least 308 children, and wounded at least 5,000 more. The majority of casualties were civilians. Evidence of war crimes was published by the UN's Fact-Finding Mission, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.

Bombs

The Israeli military uses various bombs manufactured by General Dynamics, including BLU-113 5,000–pound "bunker buster" bombs, BLU-109 "hardened penetration" bombs, and MK- 82 and 84 "general-purpose" bombs.

General Dynamics' MK-84 2,000-pound bombs have been used extensively by the Israeli Air Force during its frequent assaults on Gaza, including in 2021 and in multiple suspected war crimes in 2014. In 2015, the UN Commission of Inquiry that investigated the 2014 attack on Gaza warned that the use of MK-84 bombs in highly populated areas would likely "constitute a violation of the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks."

The U.S. supplied Israel with 50 BLU-113 bombs and 700 BLU-109 bombs as part of a $1.8 billion Foreign Military Sale in 2015. In 2012, General Dynamics was named as a principal contractor for a $647 million proposed Foreign Military Sale to Israel, which included at least 1,725 BLU-109 bombs, 1,725 MK-82 bombs, and 3,450 MK-84 bombs. Additionally, in 2007, the U.S. approved sales of 3,500 MK-84s to Israel.

Warplanes: F-15, F-16, F-35

General Dynamics provides weapon systems, components, and maintenance services to Israel's fleet of F-15, F-16, and F-35 fighter jets. The company manufactures the 20mm guns for F-15E fighter jets; 25mm guns for F-15, F-16, and F-35 aircraft; and 30mm "gun pods" for F-15 and F-16 aircraft. Its 20mm ammunition loading system is also installed on F-15 and F-16 aircraft. General Dynamics designed the F-16 and sold it to Israel until 1993. Today, the aircraft is manufactured by Lockheed Martin.

Since the 1970s, the F-16 has been the Israeli Air Force's "most important fighter jet" and has been used by the Israeli military in all of its major assaults on Gaza. For example, during Israel's 2021 offensive, F-16s were described as the "mainstay of the bombardment." They were documented, for example, bombing Gaza City's Rimal neighborhood, as well as residential buildings and the offices of news organizations, including Al Jazeera and the Associated Press. During the 2008–2009 assault, Israeli F-16s targeted civilians, civilian homes, and refugee camps. The attacks killed numerous Palestinians, including 22 members of a single family, 12 of whom were children under the age of 10.

In 2018, Israel became the first country in the world to launch an airstrike using F-35I fighter jets, a heavily modified version of the F-35. Since then, the Israeli Air Force has used the aircraft during assaults in and around Gaza. For example, during its 2021 assault, the Israeli Air Force deployed 80 fighter jets, including the F-35I, to carry out "waves of airstrikes across the Gaza Strip."

Additionally, General Dynamics subsidiary Gulfstream provides the Israeli military with a special electronic mission aircraft (SEMA)—a retrofitted G550 business jet—for "electronic intelligence, communications intelligence and ground movement detection." Selected in 2001 by the Israeli military to develop the aircraft, Gulfstream provided the first SEMA aircraft to the Israeli Air Force in 2005. In 2021, Israel unveiled the Oron "spy aircraft," also based on the Gulfstream G550, which it uses to "monitor enemy activities" across Israel's borders, including in the Gaza Strip.

Combat and Armored Personnel Vehicles

General Dynamics provides the Israeli military with weapon systems and components for its armored combat and personnel vehicles. For example, the GD 883 V-12 diesel engine, manufactured by General Dynamics in the U.S., is transferred to Israel for installation and integration into its main battle tank, the Merkava IV.

Merkava IV tanks have been used by the Israeli military at the Israel-Gaza border in all major assaults on Gaza: in 2022, 2021, 2014, 2012, and 2008–2009. Merkava tanks are regularly used to patrol the Israel-Gaza border and to fire at military and civilian targets in Gaza, often resulting in injuries of Palestinians. Additionally, in 2020, Merkava tanks were used alongside an armored Caterpillar bulldozer, in an apparent violation of international humanitarian law, to drag the body of a Palestinian man after he was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers.

General Dynamics previously manufactured the chassis and other key components for the Israeli military's 386 Namer (Leopard) armored personnel carriers (APCs), which are considered "the most protected armored armored combat vehicle[s] in the world." Namer APCs have been used in multiple assaults on the Gaza Strip—for example, in 2014. In 2017, the Israeli military signed a $310 million contract with General Dynamics to produce components for these armored vehicles.

General Dynamics has been a major contractor of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Between 2004 and 2024, DHS signed contracts worth over $8.8 billion with General Dynamics. These contracts include systems such as IDENT (see below), ARIES (see below), and the Travel Document Personalization System.

General Dynamics is the primary contractor for the Automated Biometric Identity System (IDENT), “the central DHS-wide system for storage and processing of biometric and associated biographic information.” DHS uses IDENT to store, match, process, and share biometric and biographic information on over 230 million individuals. The initial contract for IDENT was awarded in 2015 to CSRA, which was acquired by General Dynamics three years later. 

IDENT is an essential tool used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as local and state police, for tracking, monitoring, and detaining immigrants. It was critical in facilitating the Secure Communities program, an ICE program that was directly responsible for an estimated 450,000 deportations between 2008 and 2014 alone.

Since 2015, DHS has been working to replace IDENT with the Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology System (HART). In 2017, the agency awarded Peraton, a company owned by private equity firm Veritas Capital, a contract worth a potential $168.2 million for developing HART. However, in September 2023, the U.S. Government Accountability Office published a report explaining that HART was behind schedule and stating that DHS had failed to address “privacy weaknesses,” including risks associated with storing unique identifiable data, such as DNA, fingerprints, facial patterns, full names, and country of origin.

Until HART’s completion, DHS will retain IDENT as its “system of record” and will use both systems for a few more years. For that purpose, in 2020, DHS awarded General Dynamics another contract through October 2025, worth a potential $64.3 million, for IT services for IDENT.

In 2017, CSRA was awarded a contract to deploy “an enduring biometrically based identity management service” as a part of the Digitus agreement signed between Mexico and the U.S. The Digitus agreement was intended to support biometric collection of Central Americans being held at detention centers in Mexico. However, as of 2020, the Mexican government has opted to discontinue the contract, as it made Mexican authorities overly reliant on a single company.

In addition to IDENT, in 2022, General Dynamics was awarded a one-year, $101 million contract for providing maintenance to one of DHS’s data centers and supporting the Automated Real-time Identity Exchange System (ARIES). ARIES was created to handle international fingerprint sharing between DHS, the Department of State and the Department of Justice with “foreign partners.” ARIES supports other biometrics-based programs, such as the International Biometric Information Sharing Program (IBIS) and the Biometric Identification Transnational Migration Alert Program (BITMAP).

IBIS is used to exchange fingerprint data between the U.S. and “foreign partners,” by providing “automatic comparison of the fingerprints collected by DHS or a foreign partner on border crossers, suspected criminals, asylum seekers, irregular migrants, refugees, and other individuals.” To help promote the adoption of standards needed to exchange data with U.S. biometric systems, DHS created the Biometric Data Sharing Partnership (BDSP) to provide other countries with “sufficient domestic biometric capacity, including collection, storage, identity management  capabilities, and data protection and system security requirements, to be able to partner with DHS and improve their own domestic border security capabilities.”

In addition to HART and IDENT, ARIES will connect with CBP’s Automated Targeting System, a platform that compares traveler and cargo information, including biometrics such as fingerprints and facial images, with law enforcement and intelligence databases. One of these databases is the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) biometric database, which stores biometric data, such as fingerprints and facial images, from law enforcement across the U.S., and is a mechanism for information sharing with ICE and CBP. ARIES translates raw data from these databases into readable formats and is even capable of translating to the language of the person submitting the query to the system.

General Dynamics has a long history as one of the major contractors for surveillance U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). It was one of 14 “giants in the border security business” from 2006–2018.

CBP selected General Dynamics alongside Elbit Systems and the privately-owned Advanced Technology Systems Company (ATSC) as the three companies that will modernize and expand its surveillance tower systems during 2024-2038. General Dynamics’ portion of the contract is worth up to $1.8 billion, and the company already received $20 million as part of this contract to upgrade 191 legacy surveillance towers.

This builds on General Dynamics role as the prime contractor for CBP’s Remote Video Surveillance System Upgrade (RVSS-U) program. These towers consist of mounted day and night cameras that feed video to a dedicated CBP facility, enabling “Border Patrol to survey large areas…as they detect, identify, and classify incursions at the border.” RVSS towers are smaller and more relocatable than Elbit Systems’ Integrated Fixed Towers.

The RVSS towers also use artificial intelligence (AI), specifically software from Matroid AI, to train machine vision models that recognize objects, people, and events captured in images or videos. This can be done in real time or with pre-recorded content, and findings can be accessed by users as reports or alert notifications.

CBP started using RVSS infrastructure as part of Boeing’s “virtual wall” contract, known as SBInet, which was canceled in 2011. Two years later, CBP awarded General Dynamics a 10-year, $175.8 million contract to upgrade its existing RVSS towers and purchase additional ones. Other companies awarded RVSS subcontracts include PureTech, Teledyne FLIR, and Dell Federal Systems. By 2024, CBP had 479 RVSS towers, mostly along the U.S.–Mexico border, but also along the Canada–U.S. border.

Beyond their original intended use, RVSS towers have been used for domestic political surveillance. In 2017, for example, CBP stationed one of its RVSS towers in San Diego to monitor political opposition to the building of prototypes for the so-called “Trump Wall,” citing the “emerging threat of demonstrations.”

Since 2000 and at least until 2024, General Dynamics has worked for the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). In addition to holding large contracts for managing the federal healthcare programs Medicare and Medicaid, the company has also provided services related to ORR’s role in enforcing the Trump administration’s family separation policy at the U.S.–Mexico border. As part of this policy, 5,500 children were forcibly separated from their families, some 1,400 of whom have not been reunited with their family members as of 2024.

Since 2015, General Dynamics has provided services related to “unaccompanied children”; ORR’s case coordination system, which monitors children as they move through the immigration detention system; and infrastructure services for “shelter care for unaccompanied children.” Children separated from their families were held in immigration jails and later placed under the care of relatives—even very distant ones—or the foster care system.

After receiving negative public attention for these activities, General Dynamics stated in 2018 that it only provided “casework support services to help ensure special needs of unaccompanied children are met, including medical requirements, and to facilitate family reunification.” The company emphasized that it had “no role in the family separation policy, nor a role in the construction or operation of detention facilities.” However, immediately following the announcement of Trump’s zero-tolerance policy, which included family separation, General Dynamics began advertising job positions to assist with the children’s detention, including bilingual case workers, data entry clerks, and a “case coordinator” responsible for monitoring cases as they moved through the system.

In 2020, HHS awarded the company a contract worth a potential $144.8 million for ORR’s “unaccompanied children’s operations,” which provides so-called “shelter care” and “welfare-related services” to children in ORR custody. This contract ended in September 2024.