Background: Aerojet
Several decades after it began manufacturing rubber products, General Tire & Rubber diversified into broadcasting and aeronautics.
In the 1940s, the Aerojet company began experimenting with various rocket designs. For a solid-fuel rocket, they needed binders, and turned to General Tire & Rubber for assistance. General became a partner in the company.
Radio broadcasting began with the purchase of several radio networks starting in 1943. In 1952, its purchase of WOR-TV expanded the broadcast business into television. In 1953, General Tire & Rubber bought the RKO Radio Pictures movie studio.[11] All of its media and entertainment holdings were organized into the RKO General division.
Due to the studio and rocket businesses, General Tire & Rubber came to own a great deal of property in California. Its internal facilities management unit began commercializing its operations, landing General Tire & Rubber in the real estate business. This started when Aerojet-General Corporation acquired approximately 12600 acre of land in Eastern Sacramento County. Aerojet converted these former gold fields into one of the premier rocket manufacturing and testing facilities in the Western world. However, most of this land was used to provide safe buffer zones for Aerojet's testing and manufacturing operations. Later, as the need for these facilities and safety zones decreased, the property became available for other uses. Located 15 mi northeast of Sacramento along U.S. Highway 50, the properties were valuable, being in a key growth corridor in the region. Approximately 6000 acre of the Aerojet lands are now being planned as a community called Easton. Easton Development Company LLC was formed to assist in the process.[12]
Background: Rocketdyne
In 1955, North American Aviation spun off Rocketdyne, a developer of rocket motors that built upon research conducted into the German V-2 Rocket after World War II. Rocketdyne would become a major supplier for NASA, producing the Rocketdyne F-1 engine for the Saturn V rocket of the Apollo Space Program as well as the RS-25 engine of the Space Shuttle program and its successor the Space Launch System (SLS) program.
Aerojet Rocketdyne engines have contributed to every successful NASA Mars mission, including powering the launch, entry, descent, and landing phases of the Perseverance rover mission.[13]
Name change
In 1984, General Tire created a parent holding company, GenCorp, Inc., for its various business ventures.
The main subsidiaries were:
Through its RKO General subsidiary, the company also held stakes in:
- General Tire and Rubber
- RKO General, the broadcast arm of the conglomerate;
- DiversiTech General, a manufacturer of tennis balls and polymer products, including automotive soundproofing and home wallpapers.
- Aerojet General, a defense (missile) contractor.
- Frontier Airlines.
- RKO bottlers, which operated Pepsi-Cola distributorships; and several resorts and hotels, including the Westward Look resort in Tucson, Arizona.
Disconglomeration
Faced with a hostile takeover attempt, among other difficulties, GenCorp, Inc. shed some of its long-held units in the late 1980s.
RKO General ran into difficulties with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) during license renewal proceedings in the late 1980s. The FCC was reluctant to renew the broadcast licenses, due to widespread lying to advertisers and regulators. As a result of the protracted proceedings, GenCorp sold RKO General's broadcast properties beginning in 1987.
GenCorp, Inc. also sold its former flagship, General Tire, to German tire manufacturer Continental AG in order to concentrate on Aerojet.
In 1999, GenCorp, Inc. spun off its Decorative & Building Products and Performance Chemicals businesses. GenCorp, Inc. formed OMNOVA Solutions Inc. into a separate, publicly traded company, and transferred those businesses into it.
GenCorp, Inc.'s two remaining businesses, as of 2008, were Aerojet and Easton Real Estate.[14]
Pension problems and leadership changes
GenCorp, Inc. withdrew its over-funded pension during the real estate boom years of 2006 and 2007. The real estate bust caused an underfunding of the pension plan of over $300 million. This caused a freeze of its pension plan on February 1, 2009, and an end to 401(k) match on January 15, 2009. The move was expected to save the company $29 million a year.[15]
In March 2008, hedge fund Steel Partners II, which owned 14% of GenCorp, Inc., made an agreement that saw Terry J. Hall step down as CEO and gave Steel Partners II control of three board seats plus the selection of the new CEO (who would also hold a board seat). Steel Partners II had previously attempted a hostile takeover in 2004, and forced the deal after complaining about "significant underperformance and deterioration of share price". Aerojet President J. Scott Neish was named interim CEO.[16]
In January 2010, Scott Seymour, the former head of Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems from 2002 to 2008, was appointed permanent CEO of GenCorp, Inc. and Neish resigned.[17]
Aeronautics expansion
In July 2012, GenCorp, Inc. agreed to buy rocket engine producer Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne from United Technologies Corporation for $550 million.[18][19][20] The FTC approved the deal on June 10, 2013, and it closed on June 17.[21] [22][23][24] GenCorp, Inc. was later renamed Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings, Inc on April 27, 2015.
Abandoned acquisition by Lockheed Martin
On December 20, 2020, it was announced that Lockheed Martin would acquire the company for $4.4 billion.[26] The acquisition was expected to close in first quarter of 2022,[27] but this received opposition from Raytheon Technologies. Later the FTC sued to block this deal on a 4–0 vote in January 2022 on grounds that this would eliminate the largest independent maker of rocket motors[28][29] and Lockheed subsequently abandoned the deal in February 2022.[30][31]
Acquisition by L3Harris
In December 2022, L3Harris Technologies agreed to buy the company for $4.7 billion in cash.[32] The acquisition was completed in July 2023.[33] L3Harris named former CTO Ross Niebergall as president of the new Aerojet Rocketdyne business segment,[4] which would now be headquartered in Palm Bay, Florida.[34]
Spin off from L3Harris
In January 2026, L3Harris agreed to sell a majority stake in the Aerojet Rocketdyne "Space Propulsion and Power Systems" sector to AE Industrial Partners, who will spin off the business under the name "Rocketdyne" in the second half of the year. The deal includes the RL-10 upper stage engine used on the Vulcan rocket, but not the RS-25 engine used by the Space Launch System.[35][9] Later that month, it was announced that the remaining Missile Solutions business was also planned to undergo an IPO as a new company, with L3Harris retaining controlling ownership and the US Government investing $1 billion, in the second half of 2026.[10]
